


On Deaf Ears

by Ziracona



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: AU for my usual DbD world, Abuse, Alcohol Addiction, Canon Typical Violence, Disability, Drug Addiction, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Impaired Hearing, M/M, Memory Loss, PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Strong Language, Suffering, Undeath, and a little different in flavor, death (as per all DbD), drug/alcohol use, hearing loss, withdrawl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:14:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 37,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29460360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ziracona/pseuds/Ziracona
Summary: For a long time, pushing through suffering to continue to exist somewhat in the void has been a thankless and often fruitless task, but Vigo could never leave the person he loves alone. Not even forgotten. Things are starting to feel bleak when a new survivor in the realm presents a possible opportunity to help Philip again, but what starts as just a means to a very important end slowly becomes something like a very broken, very sad, very deeply committed family.
Relationships: Philip Ojomo | The Wraith & Vigo, Philip Ojomo | The Wraith/Vigo, Philip Ojomo/Vigo
Comments: 19
Kudos: 21





	1. Aanoestidh

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tridraconeus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tridraconeus/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time seems to be running out for more than one person in the realm. And somehow, that may be what ends up temporarily buying them just a little more time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Most things are provided through context as needed, and there's no need to read ILM for this to make sense--actually, this has some ILM spoilers in the next few lines, as the stuff about Vigo and Philip is stuff that only comes to light slowly in that one. Kind of a given here though, with the main POVs. Anyway, feel free to avoid the spoilers or to skip down to the end chapter notes to read them before actually reading the chapter. Whatever you would like.)

_*Static Crackle*_

_*Desperate voice. Adult, masculine, mid-register. Unknown. Sound Quality: Low.*_

_It’s getting bad._

_*Speaker stops, but recording continues. Sound of voices can be heard at various distances: whispers, moans, very distant screams. Likely human. None close to speaker. Accompanied by wind and unidentifiable sounds of debris. Sound quality: Very Low. Voice resumes. Sound quality back to low.*_

_I swear, I am doing everything I can—everything I know how to do, but it’s not enough. Somehow, I’ve lasted so much longer here than I thought, in fragments and pieces and moments of time, and he’s the one fading?_

_I can’t deal with this. Just. No! No. No, fuck of this. I **refuse** to accept it. It’s—it is unacceptable, that’s what it is. I won’t do it. There’s got to be a way. There’s always a way. Always a way… always._

_*Long exhale. Wind heavy in background.*_

_…I just. I just need to take a breath. Metaphorically. I can’t really, literally, not anymore. I need to think. My attempts have not always been successful, but they haven’t been nothing either. I’ve had small successes, I just need one of those. One to…buy me a little time to think of a bigger one. …But it’s… It’s not good._

_*Wind. Sound of movement close to speaker. Speaker calmer now, but sad.*_

_I can barely move my fingers anymore. …It’s funny that’s the thing that would make me sad, isn’t it? When it’s…Just so little, compared to everything else. And it’s my damn fingers that finally made me want to cry._

_Fuck._

_I’m going to be in trouble shortly, if I don’t think of something. I can’t write anymore, like this. When I run out of energy to recharge the recorder battery, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll be out of stories to tell, and that’s going to be it for me._

_*Exhale. More composed.*_

_No. That’s foolish. I’ll never let it get that far. I just need to think. …No. I need to watch. I need to watch carefully, like never before. I can’t miss an opportunity, because I might not make it to the next one. But there’ll be a chance, and I’ll find it, and everything is going to be okay. It’s not over. I can still get him out. I can get him home. There’s got to be a way. I just need to watch. I know him. He’ll give me something to work with. *Fondly* He always does…_

_*Click off*_

* * *

_*Static Crackle*_

_*Speaker adult, masculine, mid-range. Calm. Sound quality: poor.*_

_That’ll do it. You never let me down, do you kjære? Like clockwork. Yes… I can work with that. At least for a bit. I can make this work…_

_*Click off*_

* * *

Philip Ojomo. Entry 15,011.

I am frustrated.

Usually, I attempt to record a good memory here, to make the days seem distinct, but I don’t think I have any today. …Mmm. …This is not such a good thing to talk about, perhaps, but I have heard it said you can improve your mood and thoughts by writing them out as well, even anger, so I don’t see much to lose.

I used to wonder. About things, about the souls here, and about myself and my own future.

But it’s been a long time, since I did that. Since I cared. It’s not that I don’t care now, it’s just. I have so little energy. I often just don’t begin to.

I used to, though. I asked the Iska once, a long time ago now, why the spirits here mostly look so young. Some can barely be more than teenagers. And it told me the reason for this. ‘They appear in the form they thought of themselves as the best at once they have passed on to here.’ For some this is successful grown men, for some this is young and ambitious almost children, but they are all shells. It was a relief to know that. It made cutting down the ones who seem so young much more bearable to me. It has never been a source of frustration before, but I am almost at the end of my rope.

I suppose I shouldn’t care. I mean—they are all monstrous, aren’t they? To end up here, they were men like Azarov in life. It barely concerns me, anyway. I am a tool to my god, fulfilling tasks, and little else. I am not much more than my own sickle.

And yet.

There is a boy here. A newer soul. Fuck—I haven’t even thought of that conversation in years! It barely matters. Nothing—I mean _everything,_ barely matters. But the boy? I cannot comprehend it. His ideal self appears to be perhaps 20 years old, half-deaf, and eternally drunk enough to be impaired! All of these souls are viciously terrible people, I know, but I suppose I have thought that many of them must think they were better than they were. What kind of atrocities must you have committed with complete abandon to _choose_ to spend your afterlife with an ‘ideal form’ that is _that_? Is not even in complete control of its own functions? The…

I have no idea why this frustrates me so much. I have felt so dead and empty for so long, it feels almost odd, almost funny, to feel any emotion so strongly again.

I am not used to it…

I will have to adjust, though, because he is not going anywhere, and I cannot make him appear better.

Perhaps it’s just as well, though. I don’t mind feeling something again, even if it’s anger. Little bastard… What kinds of things do you do for a laugh in life? I know men like you, who think it is fun to be unaccountable and throw even their own life to the wind with their caution. It fills me with distaste to think on it. Mmm…Perhaps I’ll try to catch him first the next time I have him in a trial.

Maybe I should just think of _anything_ more significant and focus on that instead, and stop being such a ridiculous version of my own self. Let me see. Did anything happen today worth telling?

Fuck. No, the only thing I really remember is the spineless little drunk weasel messing up on a generator and the look of betrayal on the girl he was with’s face when I found them because of it. Hah, I really should not care. It makes my job easier. I should feel no sympathy if he is worse to be around than the others. They must all deserve it.

Ah well. It was stupid, but I suppose that is the point of journals. To fill them with stupid words you do not have to feel judgement or doubt for, because no one but you will ever read them.

And I do feel a bit better. So perhaps it was not such a waste after all.

* * *

Philip Ojomo. Entry 15,029.

I have been thinking. About the rules of this place again. It’s been a long time since I did this, but I began to with the arrival of the new boy. Or…Maybe ‘arrival’ is not accurate—I believe I must have had him in trials for at least a month before realizing he was drunk in nearly all of them. I was…very numb. It’s hard to describe how that felt. I’ve been thinking about that a lot too, because I feel so different right now.

It’s odd.

The days blur together here. I’ve known that for years though. And yet, this is the first time I’ve realized how truly.

When I was numb, I did not realize how badly I felt. I did not realize anything was off at all. There was…strange comfort, in the haze, the pain. It is much easier to do bloody work when your eyes barely register the scene in front of you. And, despite my best efforts, I have never truly been able to ride my anger and drive for justice and revenge the way I know I am meant to, and simply grow accustomed to the killings—even if they _are_ killings of those who deserve it.

Taking a life is a strange feeling. So is wounding another. And you cannot grow accustomed to it, I think, but you can grow numb.

People think these two things are the same, but they are not. Carrying a heavy weight, that you can become accustomed to. To heat or cold, to the hours you must be awake. But pain, and violence, loss? Those you become numb to instead. There is no way to simply make the nature of those things accepted to a human, so you turn them off instead, and it is not the same. It protects you, perhaps, but it kills a part of you as well. And unlike things you grow accustomed to, things you have become numb to never stop being dangerous, stop being hard. You are insulated, but if that numbness breaks, you have no protection built up for it. It is a glove, not a callus.

That is wrong, though, maybe. I should know. I have seen men who are not numb and are not marked by killings. Who revel in them. Perhaps it is a thing you can become accustomed to, and I simply do not possess whatever trait or skill it takes to do so.

Good.

But I am digressing. That’s good, I think! I haven’t written anything long enough _to_ digress for months. I am much less numb now. Truly it is…scary, to think back on how I felt. In a fog. Not because it is new to me, but because I have known this before. When I was very little. I remember the way this kind of a depression and numbness consumes, from an age I did not have a term for it. It is…engulfing. What scares me is that I could not recognize it when I was in its heart this time. I did not think anything had changed. How can a person miss being so close to a walking corpse?

I don’t know. But however it happened, I am doing better. I have found things to focus on again, and I suppose I owe that to the newest survivor in an odd way. It was my frustration that woke me up. And then I started really thinking again. About all of this.

I cannot remember what I wrote last time I spoke about this, though I suppose I could look for the Entry. … Yes, I mentioned how the Iska told me their appearances are how they thought themselves best in life. Their ‘ideal’ self. And at first I was furious over this, because it would take some kind of thoughtless bastard to consider a drunk and inconsiderate teen their best self, but I was off. I am not sure if I even ‘think’ I am off so much as know it. There is just…no way that makes sense.

A few trials ago, I saw the boy stumbling over the uneven ground in the MacMillan estate and skin his knee against a tree root, then drag himself up and keep unsteadily making it towards a generator. He was talking to himself under his breath, which even at that low a volume is dangerous in a trial. Telling himself very quietly something along the lines of, “It’s okay—okay. You got this shit. Just one foot, another. Keep going. It’s not gonna be last time. Fuck-drunk can s-still do this. It’s all fine. It’s all fucking fine.”

He was saying it a little too loudly, but I am fairly certain he couldn’t tell. The boy is not…deaf, he can hear things, just not them all. He can hear a pallet fall, he can hear me uncloak and ring the bell, or the gates power on—I know, because I have seen him react. But many things he does not seem to hear, or hear well—crows, footfalls, someone bumping into a tree. I think his hearing is simply bad. And he was talking to himself so loudly because he could not tell. The look on his face was miserable. And I recalled in that instant that perhaps every time I have seen this boy, his expression has also been miserable. It seems to be the only thing he knows how to be. Even unharmed, at a trial’s start. Not fear, or wariness, or determination. Just misery. And guilt.

I should have struck him, since that is my job, and I did—later in the trial—but I passed by him that time. I don’t know exactly why, except that he was not aware of me, so he would never know I had done it, and I felt guilt in that moment, because it occurred to me there is no way someone could live a life of any kind of fulfillment, even a vile one, and see their best self as an impaired addict, and at such a young age, already so broken. I… I know I should feel no pity, and I am not even sure that I do, but it occurred to me in that moment that the only way such a form could be what he sees as his ideal one is if eternally drunk, addicted, miserable and going deaf in his teens was just, the happiest this man ever was in life.

Gods. I wish I knew what things he has done to deserve to be here, because it is so impossible to look at that and not feel pity. How shattering a life must you live to have not one memory of being more okay?

I no longer like to see him in trials. I don’t know that I ever did, or do, with any of them, but I dislike it now. He must deserve this, but I can’t know, and to imagine at such a life is… I feel pity.

* * *

Philip had been doing well in trials.

He usually did. After all, invisibility was quite the weapon to a hunter. To further aid that, almost every other reaper had a much more forceful style, and he was only of a very few you would need to hide from constantly, rather than almost universally end up trying to outrun. It made switching strategies more difficult for the souls.

Still, it _wasn’t_ an easy job. Philip had to plan carefully to do his job well, and he always sought to. He got no pleasure out of this, not in the sadistic way he had heard the Doctor laughing over new tactics, and not in the competitive way the group of young adults talked to each other about strategy sometimes loud enough to be heard whenever the old lodge was beside his own Autohaven, and yet, Philip tried to do _well._ It was his job, after all. His…half of a bargain to fulfil, more or less. His duty.

And for Philip, doing his job well usually meant switching up strategies. The souls were smart, and they would adapt to anything given enough time.

While magic had never really been a thing Philip knew, just tales from his grandmother as a boy, he had developed a number of alterations to his own powers here in the fog, and they served well enough. And sometimes the Iska itself would reward him for service, and give him a new bone clapper to use for the bell. Usually the things broke after a handful of uses, no matter how sturdy and well made they appeared, but they were exceedingly useful while they lasted. Besides, the breaking never happened in trials—only after them. He knew it was on purpose. If they didn’t break after use, he wouldn’t have to keep working so hard to earn more. Which was admittedly a little irritating, because he didn’t _need_ the excess motivation—he already always did the best he could, and this had no effect on that except that sometimes he had to make do with less ideal tools, but he really wasn’t about to go bring that up with a Spirit. He could make do, and he did.

And recently, he had been making due quite well.

But not tonight. Tonight, he was using some of his hard-earned tools on the hunt. They had been getting too comfortable with how he had been hunting, relying on speed almost more than invisibility, in the symbols he had drawn on the bell to alter his powers. It had been effective, and for several weeks, but it was not good to hunt only one way too long, or the souls would find ways to meet you, and it was better to change before you started to fail than once you did. Khugwemuu for a symbol on the bell. One of the simplest to use of all, but also one of the most effective. It took away the red stain that warned he was near for a few seconds after uncloaking, and make him silent as the ghost it was meant to represent. No overwhelming terror radius to give him away. A ‘wraith’ truly, for a few seconds at least. This was always a useful one, but he hadn’t used it in months, because it paired best with boneclappers of the kind the Entity gave him as rewards, and it had not been pleased enough with his work until recently to give him more. He had one now though. One of the rarest gifts from the Iska too. Simple looking rope tied ornately around the boneclapper to muffle sound—mundane almost. But it was none of those things. It did not ‘muffle’ sound the way a true rope would have, it almost cast silence like a spell, it was so deafening. He could not even hear the moving of his arms when he used it. And there was a deeply powerful energy seeping through it and up into your skin with your fingers around the grip.

It was a particular favorite of Philip’s, for the way it allowed him to move like a shadow through trial grounds in absolute and irrefragable silence, and it was not a gift he was given often, so he was glad to be using it on this night. There was something almost calming about the way the grip felt, even when he hadn’t held one in a long time.

The trial grounds were a replica of the old ironworks on the MacMillan estate this time. Large, and empty, with the sound of loose metal moved on breezes clanging and echoing idly throughout the ancient factory, and beyond it, nothing but the trees and grass, and through it all, Philip stalked like a tall dark shadow. Like the wind itself. And he got lucky. Only a few seconds in, and he spotted one of the girls digging through a chest near the killer’s shack. The blonde who fought like a tiger on her way to a hook. Philip winced internally at the near future and the bruises he was going to have on his shoulders in a few seconds and moved towards her, and the girl’s head shot up like he’d stepped on a branch and cracked it, and she whirled her head to look around. Philip went perfectly still. It wasn’t enough. Whatever he’d done to alert her, she was on her feet now, ready to run, and she did.

But she guessed wrong. And she ran _towards_ him, and the moment she passed him, Philip uncloaked in complete silence and shot out a hand, snagging her hair as it trailed behind her, and the girl gave a shriek of surprise as much as fear, and toppled over backwards, dragged painfully off-balance, and landed at his feet. Philip didn’t much like dragging a woman to death by her hair no matter who she had been in life and what she’d done to deserve it, so he let go as soon as she hit the ground, and dragged her up by her collar instead as she flailed and screamed, and threw her over a shoulder.

The girl beat and shouted and kicked at him as he walked towards a hook attached to the edge of the shack, efforts increasing in desperation the closer he got, and it hurt like hell, but that did little to deter him. Philip was used to being hit, and to ignoring struggles and cries and pleas, and it was easy to lift her onto the hook and run her through on it, and he did, not really looking at his work and doing his best to let her agonized scream glance off him as he turned away and vanished without a sound back into the night. No pleasure, no hesitation. Just what had to be done. It was the only way to fulfil this kind of a grim calling.

It was quiet in the estate tonight. It couldn’t be much more quiet than usual, but Philip had grown used to the sound of his own breathing and feet and the idle rustling of his clothes and the sigh of the wind along the blades of his sickle. They were so much fainter, with the coxcomb rope leaking its energy up his arm, and he had been so used to considering those noises a part of silence since they were never really gone, that now it felt like something darker than silence—an utter lack of noise, not a low level of it. Beautiful in a way, and unnerving in another. Or, it would have been, if there had been anything here to fear. So, it wasn’t, not to him. Simply lonely, perhaps.

It helped a little though. Peace was calming, especially in a trial, and he moved swiftly, looking for a new target in the overgrown yard, and found one easily. The newest boy, the one who had originally caused him such anger, and a little drunk _again_ by the look of it. He was on a generator outside the old Ironwork, near a gate, and the boy had his back to Philip, so he closed the distance fast, until when he was only about ten feet away, the boy seemed to sense something, and turned to look. Philip froze completely, and the boy looked _right at_ where he had been, then right through him, and then, after a quick, nervous once-over of the yard, mismatched green and brown eyes scanning everything in his line of sight, the boy returned to his generator.

Philip waited a few seconds, to be safe, and then closed the remaining ten feet in two long strides, and uncloaked.

And the boy turned around at just the wrong moment, and _saw_ him.

Hand still on the bell, still ringing it, and only half burned out of invisibility, and Philip cursed himself and prepared for the chase he was going to lose his lead on, and the boy didn’t run. He startled, like Philip had _never_ seen a soul startle before—at least not after their first day. The soul flung himself bodily backwards and hit the ground hard, staring in horror, and Philip shot forward like a bolt of lightning and brought the blade of his sickle flashing down across the black denim jacket and ratty grey band t-shirt over the boy’s chest, and the soul cried out in pain and jerked as far out of his reach as he could and crawled blindly on his elbows for about a foot, until he hit a tree just past the gen, and then he just _stayed_ there like he’d forgotten he had legs. Cowering and shaking, eyes wide with horror, and horror like he might cry, hyperventilating. Not running. _Traumatized,_ Philip realized in confusion as the man he had to remind himself just _looked_ like a teenager shuddered uncontrollably at his feet. He wasn’t even registering Philip as a threat, not even with his chest leaking blood. Something had scared him _more_ than Philip did, and scared him so much he had completely lost all ability to function, and it was almost unnerving—Philip had never seen someone here more afraid of anything than their oncoming death. _No._ he realized, trying to kill the feeling in his gut. No, not unnerving. _Pitiful._

It was ridiculously weak to feel that way towards a soul, considering what they’d done to end up here. And he. _Fuck._ Why on earth had this happened? The boy had never been so scared of him before, and it wasn’t just his mind playing tricks on him because he’d started feeling pity already, thinking of how empty his life must have been to end up with this as his most ideal self—the boy was not just too scared to run from him, he was too shattered to even think to _try_ , like he was a child who had just watched Philip rip a man’s spine out with his fingers and consume what was left in front of him.

_What the hell did…?_

**_Oh._ **

It hit him and sunk in like a knife in his back. Philip fixed his gaze on the boy’s face again and the teenager looked back right through him with those distinct unmatching eyes, not really seeing anything but the fear and horror that had been so much they had broken him _You are something close to deaf,_ thought Philip, ignoring all the thoughts his mind was trying to throw his way about what he should be doing and should not be doing, unable and unwilling to truly registering any of them in the moment past the look on the boy’s face, _But you know you can hear the bell, and it’s a loud sound, and so is my presence, but this time they were completely gone, so of course. Of course not knowing I can do this, you will think you’ve lost your ears completely now. And here, that would be more than a death sentence to you. Here?_ Here, trying to navigate trials so built on sound with no access to it at all would go from unimaginable torture to an amount he must know would erase him completely with its suffering in a matter of days. No wonder he looked like a corpse.

Philip knelt.

The boy reacted to that finally, registering the closer presence of a monster, and backpedaling—trying to, forgetting he already had nowhere to go. When he hit the tree immediately, he still didn’t try to get up or run or even defend himself. Just froze there with shudders running up and down his spine and a chest heaving panicked breaths, eyes welled up and close to crying. Given up on his chance of living already, but just as terrified as ever of the coming death.

Moving his left hand carefully, palm up, Philip reached out and placed it on the boy’s shoulder, and the kid blanched at the touch and shut his eyes, shaking and waiting for the hit. He didn’t even raise his arms to shield his face. Too buried in fear to remember that was an option.

Still moving slow and gentle, Philip raised his sickle in his right hand and flicked the blade against the generator by his side.

The ‘clang’ echoed, breaking the stillness of the woods, and the boy opened his eyes immediately, shock registering in his green and brown irises, and stared from the generator, up to Philip. Moving carefully to not seem threatening as much as he could help it, Philip angled his blade and struck the side of the generator again while the boy watched. The teenager sucked in a little gasp, then stared up at Philip again, calmer than before, like the sound had placed him back in his body, but with an expression on his face no soul had ever looked at him with before, and for a second he had no idea what it was, and then he registered the expression in it as _grateful,_ and everything he had just done hit him like a downpour of freezing rain and he let go of the boy and jerked to his feet, heart pounding.

_Fuck. Fuck! –What are you doing? What have you **done?** You cannot do this to them—you are not meant to ever be a comfort! Your duty is to kill them for their crimes. What were you thinking?! Have you lost your mind entirely?!_

He should kill the boy. Here, now, while it might be fast enough that he would think he’d done all of this as some cruel joke. But. _Fuck. I can’t—_

The boy was still staring up at him. He had looked startled and afraid when Philip took his feet, and pulled his arms and legs in closer defensively, but he hadn’t run. And Philip hadn’t hit him immediately, so the alarm was already a little faded.

“I-I. You, uh.”

There was something in the boy’s eyes, and Philip realized with overwhelming horror that he was going to thank him. _I can’t._

In a panic, Philip summoned the wailing bell and cloaked silently, needing his hastened speed in invisibility suddenly very much to get as far away from this soul as possible. The boy stared for a second, taken aback, and then reached out a hand a little and opened his mouth like he might try to call to him or ask him to stop, and Philip turned and fled.

Behind him, the boy watched, stupefied, as the shimmering shape flashed off into the night, and then finally slowly lowered his hand, lost, staring at the place where it had been. He could still feel his heart thudding at a rate that made him sick, and the anxiety was still so fresh and real he felt like he was going to puke it up just to correct his nerves. _Fuck_ , his chest hurt too. He’d been so freaked out before, he hadn’t even really registered the pain from being hit until now. _But what the fuck just happened? The fucking Wraith—he? Jesus. I…I. I thought._

Oliver brought his hands up and stared at them, watching them shake. He couldn’t shut off the adrenaline he’d pumped in, and he was sick with it. The whole world felt like it was spinning. Trials had always been awful, every single one, almost unbearably so, no matter how drunk he managed to get to dull the world, but he…Fuck, he had been _so_ sure that…well, he didn’t know exactly what. _That the Entity took back the little bit of magic hearing shit it gave me when I got here? That it was never gonna let me have that forever, it was taking off the training wheels and leaving me defenseless in this shithole? That I did something stupid that finally lost me the tiny bit of my hearing I had left back home for good?_ That he was being punished, maybe? For something he didn’t know he’d even done? He didn’t really know what he’d thought, except that he’d gone completely deaf and it was never coming back. And instead, it had been some fluke, or some ability the Wraith had he hadn’t known existed, and he’d almost let himself get butchered for being stupid and flipping out, but instead the Wraith had just…helped him. Or…Or been kind to him—merciful, anyway. It had let him go, and it had been like, _gentle_ there for a second, and for no reason he could think of at all, except that he’d been freaking out, and it must have felt bad for him. It must have literally just been…being nice.

He hadn’t known these things could choose to be nice. He hadn’t known they could choose to be anything. Oliver hadn’t known that they could _feel_ anything, except anger, or glee. “But holy shit,” whispered Ollie to himself out loud for the comfort the sound gave his still not entirely reassured body.

Then they couldn’t be all bad, right? At least… _At least not you,_ he thought, looking back at the last place he’d seen the Wraith as it vanished into the fog of the crumbling estate. Ollie had never had any real idea why the killers did what they did, or where they came from, except for a select few, and he’d never really stopped to wonder, because it could only be really bad, and he’d just as gladly not know, but. “But fuck,” he whispered to the empty night, trying to understand the words still himself, “You let me go? You…” _Fuck. Gotta focus. Gotta..._ ….H-He should…Kate—no, someone had gotten her already. While he wasn’t paying attention. She was okay. Should finish his gen then, before the Wraith came back. If it. …Would it come back? W…Would it just kill him again in two minutes, like nothing had ever happened? What _had_ just happened?

Ollie didn’t know. But something had. Something really, _really_ had.

* * *

_*Click on. Static Crackle. Sound Quality: low.*_

_*Voice: Masculine, mid-range, adult. Scandinavian?*_

_“Fuck. I can’t be mad, because what else could he do, but this is going to set us back. I’m not sure how much he lost this time. I can’t stand having to see it, but I always do. I guess I…pretend that makes it less alone or something. I wish it did. I hope it does. I don’t have anything else to give. *Sharp intake of breath. Barely contained emotion* Fucking bastard. *Voice more contained again* It hurt him badly this time. That fucking bastard… It thinks it’s funny. I know it thinks it’s funny. Tailoring these little setbacks and games and punishments to be as poetically cruel and ironic as it can. It thinks it’s funny. It thinks it’s smart, doing that to him. To all of us. Fucker thought it was funny to take me when I came looking for it, and see how well that turned out for it. Had to play a risky game to finally neutralize me at all. …Fuck. I guess I don’t have room to brag anymore. It’s probably forgotten the regrets it had attached to my existence at all by now. I can’t do anything as this ghost I’m stuck as. I’m a walking corpse. I know the fucker would have let me just pass on entirely if it didn’t see that as in some way letting me win a bit. Its fucking pride.”_

_*Long exhale*_

_“That’s okay. This is okay. I can find a way again. I’ll wait and see how much it took. Maybe he’ll still remember a little of it. I can find something to work with.”_

_*Silence. Wind in background. Vague sounds of human voices suffering in distance.*_

_*Voice quiet* “…I can’t blame him. I’d have done the same thing. That’s why I love him, after all. *Exhale* Fuck.”_

_*Click off.*_

* * *

“No, I’m serious!” said Ollie excitedly, “I’m not even exaggerating this time!”

“…But why would he _do_ that?” asked Jake.

“I don’t know!” replied Ollie with great enthusiasm, “I don’t fucking know, but it’s cool, right! I mean, that’s like— _big!”_

“Huh,” said Dwight after a second, “Well.” He glanced over at Jake, then Ace and Claudette, then around the little group at all the others. “I mean, it does sound…hard to believe, but. It would be significant.”

“You’re crazy,” stated Laurie very matter-of-factly, “Killers don’t just feel bad for you and let you go. If he left you alone this time, he probably had a reason. Like, to get you to drop your guard and spend the next _seven_ trials trying to figure out if it really happened, so he gets a lot of free kills.”

“I mean, her reasoning _is_ logically sound,” agreed Feng carelessly.

“That’s not fair,” argued Claudette. She glanced over at Ollie. “ _I_ believe you. And the only reason that _really_ makes sense to do that would be because he was being kind, right? I mean. H-he can’t _know_ we’d get paranoid and make bad decisions. It’d be an awfully foolish long-con to try to pull off,” she added more hesitantly, looking to the others for reassurance.

“…I mean, it can’t hurt that much to see where it goes,” offered Quentin mostly supportively when she glanced his way, looking from her to Oliver.

“So long as we’re careful,” agreed Dwight.

Oliver had thought that meat something great was going to happen. That something really big was going to change for the better. He hadn’t known what—he’d had maybe the fewest actual guesses of anyone around the campfire what the Wraith helping him out might actually _mean,_ but he had been sure it was going to be huge, and there had still been adrenaline from the trial pumping in his veins when Dwight had agreed, and whatever plan Dwight suggested, people would follow, so it had felt like a lock clicking open to some bold new path ahead where things might be even like, 4% less shitty, and he had grinned, overwhelmed with energy at the unknown that might for once be better than the past, not worse.

But he should have known.

He really should have. And honestly, when the next trial he saw the Wraith in, the man looked at him with a colder gaze than he’d soon on its face in weeks and cut him down without hesitation or restraint, he wasn’t even hurt or surprised. Just…let down, maybe. This kind of shit just didn’t hit him like it used to. And what had he really expected, anyway?

Ollie was an old friend to disappointment. Or. To this, whatever _this_ was. It just… Well, it sucked, to be honest, and he didn’t really want to think about it. Before the Wraith had helped him, life had been a lot simpler, because all the things hurting him in the realm were monsters, and that was easy to process. But now? Now he had proof that whoever the Wraith had been, he wasn’t completely bad, and didn’t want to be, he was just…stuck here. Which meant he had it even worse than Ollie did, and that wasn’t fun to think about or to think about what knowing it was supposed to mean, so Ollie just died a couple times trying to sneak alcohol out of the saloon in the Deathslinger’s trial area until he finally had a success, and then he drunk until he could _stop_ thinking about it.

Thank god for fucking alcohol. It felt like shit not to be able to use any of the drugs that had taken the edge off life before, but at least he still had that. If only that had been enough to drown out the realm and all the thoughts in his head entirely…

It didn’t matter to Ollie that the Wraith had killed him without hesitation this time, or that it seemed almost mad at him—mad like it had seemed for a while, up until about a week or so before the trial it had let him go, but maybe even worse. I mean, he knew why. When he’d seen it that night in the sunset streets of Glenvale’s old west ghost town, he’d tried to walk up to it to thank it, and it had turned around, and he’d seen with perfect clarity the blood dripping out of its ear and down the right side of its face. It had been hurt. Blood leaking from a head wound and a scratch on its arm, fresh wounds, or ones the Entity just wouldn’t let quit bleeding for fun, the way they could bleed for ages in a trial without it killing them at all, no matter how agonizing it felt and how much it should have been more blood than they had in their whole body at all. And Oliver wasn’t stupid. He put two and two together like anyone would have. The Wraith had taken pity on him because he’d thought he’d lost his hearing, and it was walking through the night with a wound like something very strong had slashed at its left side and punched its ear. It was pointed. It meant the killer had been punished for what he’d done for Ollie, so of course it wasn’t going to happen again, and of course it wasn’t happy to see him. It had shown kindness, and it had cost it, and whatever pity it had felt for him before wasn’t worth the torture it had gotten for acting on it.

He couldn’t blame the guy for that. After all, why should he? He _wasn’t_ worth the torture. And as much as he tried to tell himself it wasn’t the Wraith’s fault, and the thing had chosen to act on its own—it wasn’t like he’d even begged it to stop, or _asked_ for mercy, still. _Still_ his brain would circle back around to the kind of unshakable truth of the matter, and the truth was _he_ freaked out. And if he hadn’t done that—if he hadn’t panicked, then the Wraith wouldn’t have stopped, and it wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and he would start to feel like shit at this point in the thought process and turn it off and go find somewhere he could drink where there would be no one around to try to stop him.

 _Fuck,_ thought Ollie, trying to swallow back distress with a mouthful of whisky. People had been worried, and that made it even worse. Claudette had thought he would be sad about the Wraith changing its mind, and so had Jeff, and Jane, and Dwight, and Kate, and he’d tried to tell them he was fine, because he was, right? I mean, sure, it sucked, but what had any of them really expected? And it wasn’t like anything had gotten worse. It had just, you know, gone back to normal again. Ace had seen him coming out here to a spot in the woods to drink and stopped him for a second to ask if he just wanted to chat, and like, he appreciated the gesture, but he’d brushed him off like everybody else.

People always _said_ they were happy to listen to you talk? But they never _really_ were. Not if you did it for very long or very deep, anyway. So it was just kind of safer not to give that whole shtick a go, you know? Bumming people out or seeming needy was a really good way to get dropped forever, and anyway, it wasn’t that big a deal. He was fine. It sucked, sure, but _everything_ sucked, right? He died all the fucking time and everything in the realm was hell. The Entity loved to give him Plague trials which made him so miserable he’d just go fucking curl up in a corner of the trial grounds and cry once the infection got so bad he was puking up entrails. This wasn’t any worse than that! No way, not at all. And he was used to things being disappointing, if this was even disappointing or something.

He took another swig of whisky.

It was fine. It was what it was. He was okay. The alcohol was really helping, and he’d be back to being fun and funny and the life of the party, and could go back and hang out with the others in a few minutes without bringing them down, and things would all be chill again. It was just a shame.

The two-thirds empty container swished in his hand when he lowered it this time, and Ollie grimaced at it. _I’m gonna have to steal more of this shit though._

That was okay. He had offerings for Glenvale saved up. He could make trials there happen. All he had to do was survive one.

 _I’m fine,_ thought Ollie, smiling and leaning back against the tree he’d decided to sit under and taking a deep breath.

* * *

“Hey.”

Dwight looked up at the familiar little knocking on a tree a few paces back and saw Meg Thomas waiting politely to be acknowledged, which for Meg was unusual behavior. _Still can’t believe we do this goofy acting like we have doors shit,_ thought Dwight with affection, setting down the notebook he’d been recording supplies in, and giving her his full attention. “Hi. Something up?”

“Mmmmm, yeaaah I think,” said Meg, sliding out around the tree and walking over to lean against the one he was sitting by instead, “It’s about Ollie.”

 _Oh._ “Yeah?” asked Dwight with suddenly much less certainty he could help.

“You know,” said Meg sheepishly, “With all the stuff with Wraith the other week.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Dwight quietly, looking down at his hands.

“Do you…think he’s okay?” asked Meg.

“Honestly?” replied Dwight, watching as she slid down to sit beside him, “I got no idea. I’d _guess_ not, because when has any of us ever been, but Ollie doesn’t really talk to me.”

Meg gave him a disbelieving look. “Who does he talk to, then, Jane?”

“Uh, as far as I can _tell,_ no one,” said Dwight. He shrugged. “You know Ollie. He kind of likes to skate around on the surface of things.”

“Bro, I don’t think he _likes_ it,” said Meg pointedly, “I think he just _does_ it. Like how he’s drunk all the time.”

“No, he _definitely_ likes that,” said Dwight, mind elsewhere.

“Dude, are you pissed with him or something?” asked Meg, cocking her head and leaning closer.

“What?” said Dwight in surprise, glancing up, “No.”

“…” Meg leaned way closer and studied him with her eyes narrowed. “I dunno man, you _seem_ like it.”

“I’m really not,” protested Dwight, fairly sure it was the truth, “Although I’m pretty sure he’s mad at _me_ for some reason.”

“ _Ollie?”_ asked Meg in disbelief, “Why do you think that? I’ve never seen Ollie mad at anyone. Well—I mean, he’s probably been mad,” she added, considering, “But he never acts like it. He’s like a duck.”

“A duck?” asked Dwight, even more lost now, which he hadn’t thought would be very possible.

“Yeah,” said Meg, making a swooping motion with her arm, “’Like water off a duck’s back,’” she clarified.

“Oh,” said Dwight, relieved it hadn’t been a weirder metaphor.

“Why do you think he’s mad?” asked Meg.

“He just always seems to be,” shrugged Dwight, “I guess ‘mad’ is an over exaggeration,” he conceded after a second, “Just I always feel like whatever I say to him immediately sets him to ‘Now you’re on my _last_ nerve’. I have no idea _why._ ”

“Yeesh, that sucks,” said Meg sympathetically, “Maybe you’re just being really sensitive.”

Dwight shrugged. “I hope so. Or that I at least figure out what I’m doing wrong. More to the point though, I _am_ worried about him too. I just…also don’t feel like there’s a lot I can do to help. I tried talking to him four times since we saw Wraith again, and the longest exchange I’ve been able to get was, ‘Hey, you’ve been gone even more than usual recently. I don’t mean to be pushy, but, you’ve been drunk in every trial I’ve seen you in this week, and at least 80% of the time I’ve seen you outside one too. I’m not sure our livers work exactly the same now that we’re stuck in hell, but I’m kind of worried you might be pushing your luck with that. You look like you got hit with a truck. I’m worried about you.’ –Which, I know, not super tactful—I fucked up. But he’d been dodging me all day, and whenever I try to talk to him about the alcoholism, he gives me this glazed-over stare that somehow _still_ manages to be kind of intimidating. And even with me being about as blunt as a hammer, all I got back was, ‘Dwight, I’m fucking fine. Really. It’s not a big fucking deal; it’s about what I thought would happen anyway. Like, appreciate you’re trying to look out, but I’m good. I just like taking the edge off a little. I handle myself fine—don’t need you to do it for me,’ and then he flashed me an empty grin and walked off before I could get anything else out but a, ‘Hang on,’ he totally ignored.”

“Y _eesh,_ he _doesn’t_ like you, does he,” said Meg, giving Dwight a sympathetic grimace and a pat on the shoulder, “I mean that was a little heartfelt sitcom dad of you, but you tried.”

Dwight sighed and looked at the ground.

“Can’t think of why,” said Meg encouragingly, keeping her hand on his shoulder and giving him a smile, “I mean, you’re goofy and easy to push around, but _I_ like all that, and I do have certified icon judgement that is absolutely the universally correct call on all things in the entire world.”

“You do,” agreed Dwight, smiling back.

“He’s new,” said Meg with conviction, “Give him a little time. _We_ used to fight like cats and dogs, and you and Jake used to go at it like siblings with a blood feud. Everybody takes a while to get to know. Except me, but you can’t all be cool like me,” she added with a solemn look and great sympathy in her voice.

Dwight suppressed a smile. “If only. Still, he’s not doing so hot. I should probably see if Kate has any ideas—she seems to have clicked the best with him.”

“Okay but he’s gonna get pissed if he finds out you’re dadding with his friends behind his back,” warned Meg as Dwight got to his feet.

“I’m not ‘dadding’!” protested Dwight, “I’m just trying to keep a friend from killing himself of liver poisoning, or one day walking into a trial he doesn’t walk back out of!”

It was silent for a second, and Meg just looked at him, and Dwight was overcome suddenly with the feeling he’d said something terribly wrong and tried desperately to find what it had been.

“…Yeah,” whispered Meg, looking down, “We don’t want another Laurie.”

“Laurie’s doing okay,” said Dwight calmingly, taking a knee again to be on Meg’s level and get a good look at her face. _Okay. She’s not just worried. Something is definitely up. _“She was fine. Quentin kept her from killing herself, and she’s been doing a lot better ever since. You helped with that a lot.”

“I know,” said Meg quietly, taking a second before meeting his eyes. When she finally did, it was overwhelming how miserable she looked. She’d seemed totally fine until like, twenty seconds ago. Dwight forgot sometimes Meg was a really good actor. “I started my Meg Movie recreations and she started having fun and being a part of things. But Ollie’s already gone to those.” She hadn’t been done with the sentence, but she ended it early because her voice had suddenly gotten choked up and her eyes misted over, and she couldn’t keep going and keep how close she was to crying out of her voice. After a couple seconds of trying to choke it back inside, she just gave in and plowed on through it to finish. “He’s seen my movies and my show and my dumb games and stories and I’ve asked him to go on runs,” managed Meg through strained vocals, “and that’s all my best material. It’s all I’m good at. It’s everything, and I can’t entertain him enough to change it at _all._ I can’t fix it for him like I did her.” Her breath got shaky with the choked back emotion spilling out. “I don’t know how to make him feel better because I don’t know what’s wrong.” She stopped for a second to let tears slide down the outside of her cheeks and swallow back some snot, struggling for control over her voice again. “He won’t tell me either. He won’t tell anybody. And I’m scared.”

“Meg, what happened,” said Dwight, both hands on her shoulders now, really worried himself. “Why do you think he’s that bad off?”

For a second she couldn’t answer him. She just shut her eyes and turned her head away. After a few long seconds though, she got her voice back under control and started again. “I barely even know him,” whispered Meg. She watched some silent tears slide down her cheeks, exhausted, then staired past them at nothing. “We could be friends though. I know it. Once he finally decides I’m okay and quits messing around, and I get to talk to him for real, I think we could really get along. But he never does that… I thought I would have enough time to wear him down and get to know him for real.” She glanced back over at Dwight finally then, and tried to smile, but couldn’t make it. “I heard him talk to the Wraith.”

“What?” said Dwight, feeling an emotion he wasn’t sure if was horrified or astounded, “When?”

“Yesterday,” said Meg, looking at nothing again, voice barely audible.

“In a trial?” asked Dwight, “I didn’t think you two were—"

She shook her head. “Autohaven’s bordering us right now.”

“Wait—you mean he walked up to a killer’s home base area and started a conversation?” asked Dwight, definitely feeling horror this time.

Meg nodded.

 _What the fuck? What the fuck!_ Dwight felt like his entire brain was short circuiting. _Why would you do that Ollie! Goddamn it! You idiot! He’s going to tunnel you in every trial now and make your life a living hell! You do **not** want a killer to take notice of you! _“Why?” he asked Meg urgently, trying to find footing again. “W—Hang on, how did you _know_?”

“I was on a run,” said Meg, choking up again, “And I saw Ollie super deep in the woods, and he was being sneaky, so I followed him, because I was afraid he might be so depressed he’d try to sneak in the Deathslinger’s home base to steal more alcohol. I thought that’s where he was going—it’s right by Autohaven right now. And I was gonna stop him, if he did, but he went to Autohaven instead.”

“He didn’t go _inside_?” asked Dwight in desperation.

Meg shook her head. “Just waited in silence for a really long time until he saw the Wraith walking around. I was about to go up to him and just ask what he was doing, because it had been like seven minutes, but when he saw the Wraith, he called over to him. And I thought, ‘Oh! This makes sense. He’s sad because Wraith was nice once, and then went back to being an asshole, and he wants to change his mind,’ but he didn’t. He said, ‘Hey!’ –and the Wraith turned around and started to come over, and I think it’s the most scared I’ve ever been of the Wraith in my life and he didn’t even see me, but he was huge, and there was _nothing_ friendly in the way he was moving at all. I thought he was gonna break through the barrier and grab Ollie and drag him in and kill him. But Ollie didn’t get scared at all. He just got a look on his face like he was…fucking _ashamed_ for some reason, and started talking, and he said like, “I uh. I know you got hurt by the Entity because of me, and I’m really sorry. Nobody should _ever_ get hurt for my sake. I really appreciate you wanted to be kind and make me less afraid, and did, even though you’re not supposed to, because you’re a good person, and I’m really sorry that you got hurt over it. And me.’”

Dwight stared at her, trying to let that scene play out in his head, and feeling his gut twist inside him at the image.

“And the Wraith, it gave him the most disbelieving look I’ve ever seen,” continued Meg, looking into Dwight’s face again hopelessly, “Like...it couldn’t _believe_ he’d had the nerve to say something like that to its face, and it narrowed its eyes and changed its posture and gripped the little scythe thing, and I could _feel_ the malice coming off it, like it was saying ‘I’m gonna make you regret this. **Don’t** try me,’ without ever saying a word. It freaked me out! I can’t explain it. I-I don’t even think the Wraith is a scary killer—he looks like a big tree—but _I_ was scared of him right then Dwight, like really, **_really_** scared, and he wasn’t even looking at me. It gave Ollie that super cold, like, vicious look after he said all that to it, and then just turned its back to go and went invisible, and like, when it started? Ollie looked shocked, and I don’t know—maybe even hurt, like you’d think. But I-I stopped looking at him once the Wraith got really scary, until it turned around to go again, and then I looked back at Ollie and he was just…” She had been fine until then, but suddenly Meg wasn’t again. Her face scrunched up and she went somewhere else in her head and was still there when she finished the sentence. “...Blank. Like he was already gone. The way…Laurie used to look, back right before…”

She glanced at him for a second, and Dwight knew exactly what she meant. He could still remember it. He could still remember _all_ of it. The way he hadn’t noticed Laurie was starting to look haunted him a little now even though she was still alive. Because he _should_ have seen it coming, he should have been able to do something to prevent things from ever going that far. And he just hadn’t. He hadn’t even been suspicious, or worried at all. 

“…And he just,” Meg shrugged hopelessly, looking back at nothing again, “Kinda hung his head. And said, ‘Yeah…That’s kinda what I thought.’ And he wasn’t even mad about it. Or scared.” She looked back at Dwight and held his gaze, and she was angry now. “He thought he deserved it. He knew the Wraith was looking at him like it was going to kill him for talking to it, and he _agreed_ with it. He didn’t _want_ it to help him. He wanted it to not have helped him before. What the _fuck_!” She teared up again and scrunched up her shoulders and looked away, and Dwight was left wondering what to do and buried under the sudden weight of being the one asked to do it.

He liked Ollie. He was like, distressed and stressed out of his mind any time he had to interact with him one on one, because the guy did _not_ seem to share those feelings at all, and he kind of barely knew him—Ollie had only joined the group maybe two months ago—but he seemed like a good guy. He tried to help in trials, and worked hard, and honestly, as much as someone needed to get him to quit, Dwight kind of got the drinking 24/7. If that had been an option when he first got here, back before Meg and Claudette and Jake and Ace and he had all been a group and things had started to get better, _he_ sure as fuck would have done everything he could to be sloshed out of his brain as much as possible. It was hell here.

 _Is he really doing that poorly?_ thought Dwight, putting his arm around Meg since that was something he _could_ do right now, and she needed it. Meg just leaned the top of her head against his chest and went limp, which meant she was really, really worried. Whatever the exchange she had seen had looked like firsthand, it had been enough to make her think things were serious. _Did you really go find the Wraith to tell it nobody should ever be hurt trying to help you?_ He played back recent mental images of Ollie, looking for signs of the way Laurie had been. The empty stare, the quietness and lack of engaging in discussions period, the way of moving that cut out any unnecessary effort at all. He couldn’t find that in Ollie. Ollie was hyperactive, and always being loud and dumb for fun, and he’d done that recently too. Just. Just he hadn’t been there doing it as much, because he’d been off in the woods, drinking. _I don’t know how to help you if it’s true,_ thought Dwight, tightening his grip on Meg a little and thinking as fast as he could, but still coming up empty. Ollie didn’t listen to him. Ollie didn’t listen to anyone. _M-maybe Jane can help. She’s forceful as fuck. She could probably straighten out about anybody._

“It’ll be okay,” he promised, keeping his voice steady and level, like he really had any idea what to do, “We’ll get it sorted out. I’ll talk to Jane and Kate, and we’ll figure things out, okay?”

She nodded, then was silent for a few seconds before choking out, “How could he say that?”

“Say?” echoed Dwight, not sure which thing she was thinking about.

“’It’s not a big deal,’” managed Meg, “You said—when you asked if he was okay—he said it’s not a big deal. He doesn’t care if he dies, and it’s not a big deal.” The crying won then for good, and she couldn’t go on anymore.

“I don’t know,” whispered Dwight, keeping his arms around her back and trying to find something better to say to comfort her, but just hearing Meg’s voice saying _‘He thought he deserved it. He didn’t want it to help him. He didn’t want it to have helped him before! What the fuck!’_ echoing inside his head. _What the fuck Ollie,_ agreed Dwight, feeling sick to his stomach. _How am I ever gonna help you when you won’t even look at me?_ What the _fuck_ indeed. What the fuck was he going to be able to do? God, there had to be something this time. Quentin wasn’t always going to be there to stop someone from walking into a trial for the last time. If he was really that bad off this fast then they had to…there had to be _something._ There had to.

God, he hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The /Speed Version/ of Explanatory Setting Notes for anyone who skipped down for them: in order of appearance in-story: Vigo was taken out by the Entity some time ago because he was a threat, and has since been trapped mostly dead in the void with the other discarded souls, using the little consciousness and power he has left to try to help Philip, who he still loves devotedly despite being forgotten and basically dead. The Entity initially convinced Philip he was in an afterlife, punishing souls who did horrible acts on earth, when it 'rescued' him and took him to the realm. It uses Philip's disposition as a way to draw out more suffering from him and others, and any time he begins to realize what it truly is and what it has made him, it wipes his memory of the events that lead to him figuring that out. He does not remember Vigo, or any of the survivors he's cared for, apart from his time hunting them down. And Ollie Daley is an original survivor character created by my friend Speck. He's 22 years old.
> 
> Chapter Notes:  
> Hey! Thanks for reading. For this first little chunk, most of these notes are going to be additional contextual ones instead of research (some of those coming with the next chapter though).  
> This whole fic was come up with and is for a friend, who created Ollie, but I still tend to write all my stuff in the same universe or alternate versions of it with basically the same setup and often some overlap in past events (to In Living Memory, my first) and this is no exception. While Ollie and a lot of the people and events affected by his presence are different, if you're someone who has read ILM, this takes the same backstory as far as Philip and Vigo concerned. (If you haven't, don't worry, it should not really affect reading this. That's more like a fun AU gps note for people who want it lol). --That history being: A long time ago Philip tried to help him, Alex, and Benedict escape or kill the Entity, and they almost made it. But they didn’t. Benedict was the only one who walked away alive, Philip had his memories of the whole event ripped out by the Entity, and Vigo was killed and discarded as a walking corpse in the void, where what is left of him spends all of his energy on trying to find some way to get Philip, and Benedict, and anyone else he can, home. Or maybe on worse days, simply on trying to remain sane and present, so Philip is not alone.  
> Philip and Vigo were in a relationship before Vigo was killed. Philip no longer has any memory of this or of Vigo’s existence, although he sees him in dreams he forgets all the time, so I expect if he ever got the chance to see him again even at a distance, muscle memory would just about do him in falling apart at the sight, even if he couldn’t begin to understand why. Unfortunately, that’s probably not a chance he will get. I can hope, though.  
> The chapter title is a Southern Sámi verb meaning 'to request/plead/ask/pray'. There's three words with approximately the same meaning, but this one translated into Norwegian as "to beg a little," which seemed kind of endearingly poignant to me. And like the one Vigo would want choose to name this himself.
> 
> Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! Especially Speck, since I wrote it for you. It's been too long since I got to write for Vigo, so I have definitely had fun with that myself, and all of it. While this is as much a 'two dudes adopt a kid in the most complicated way humanly possible' as much as it is anything else, it's also very much about the relationship both have individually with Ollie, and the long-term relationship to each other Philip and Vigo have, and since it's Valentine's Day, which is a great time to celebrate all kinds of love, with a special nod to the romantic, I wanted to go ahead and post the first chapter. If you read, I really hope you enjoyed it, and will continue to! The whole thing is written, so the rest should go up pretty fast. ODE is a little different from my usual DbD stuff, but I really care about the characters, and I'm very happy I got to spend so much time just talking about their relationships and conjoined fights to make it through life. Thank you for reading. : )


	2. Haerhpie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Round two, and in their own ways, Vigo, Philip, and Ollie all attempt to take another swing and, hopefully, not a miss. But things /can't/ go as all three hope, and come to a head in a way none of them planned for.

_*Click on. Static. Sound Quality: Low*_

_*Voice: masculine, mid-range, adult, Scandinavian*_

_“…Well, I’ve been digging, and it would seem the boy is unfortunately a bit of an accidental shithead and a real piece of work. I like him.”_

_*Indeterminate sounds in BG. Wind and debris?*_

_“His name is ‘Oliver,’ but he hasn’t gone by that in ages. Prefers to be ‘Ollie,’ to his friends, and as there’s no one else left in his life but friends to be ‘Oliver’ to anymore, it’s just Ollie alone now. He had parents—has them; they aren’t dead. But he started one too many fights with them during a particularly rebellious teen phase once the drugs and alcohol already had some hooks in him, and since the economy was putting enough strain on his parents to make losing him not just the comfortable but also the economical choice, got thrown out of home just shy of graduating high-school and being a legal adult. I suppose in some ways that must hurt more, like a ‘God, it was only a few more months—couldn’t you have just waited until I was eighteen to do this?’ sort of thing, you know.”_

_*Pause. Static.*_

_“You know, I try not to pry. I mean, who likes their memories played with? It isn’t like it’s simple to get into them, even almost just a part of the system myself now, but even if I can, I usually don’t, because who would enjoy that? It feels rather like a violation of trust, doesn’t it? I would be upset. And embarrassed, I mean, who doesn’t have a couple of files of memories of embarrassing self-interviews or first attempts at something fuckups or times spent masturbating you’d just as soon not really have a stranger pop into your head and see? I mean, we all know we’ve all done it, but the point is it’s rude to know for certain. I wouldn’t be a big fan of being on the receiving end, that’s for sure. So—I try, I always do—to find some other way. Usually, I just bear witness, to whatever happens. To conversations and moments, and sometimes to the thoughts on the surface, the things internal that are so close to being voiced it’s a part of the story the person I’m bearing witness to is telling themselves. And sometimes I’ll dig deeper, to understand, to really be able to carve out the name of someone I’ve seen, so no matter how it ends, they’ll be remembered. … *Nostalgic* You know, it’s funny. Getting to ‘know’ people the way I do. I feel like I know most of them quite well by the time they die, and I’ve mourned more people than ever knew my name even in life, but they never know me. They couldn’t, could they? I’m already over and gone. I’m just…an echo of myself, a fragment. The ghost of me that won’t pass on just yet. And still, it’s a bit sad. You learn all these things, and watch so much progress and growth, and come to feel so much love and affection and pride for these people you know that don’t know you, and you know you’ll never even be a bit player or an extra in the version of their lives they take with them to wherever they end up. I’ll never even exist to them. …It’s sad. You know, I used to always tell myself that part of what was so marvelous about being alive was that no matter what happened to me, even if there was no afterlife at all, I really lived. In such an impossible and brutal and unforgiving, cruel existence as the world tries to be, I lived for years, and years, and **years** through it. I learned things, and loved people, and did things that mattered to me, and no one could ever take away the fact that was true. And I was very right. I have so much pride and happiness for the life I did live, but this ‘life’ now? This haunting, I suppose? It’s so different. It’s lonely. I’m not used to **being** lonely. And how is it lonely to me? I’ve been lonely my whole life, and never cared a drop for it. It **never** made me sad, not a bit. I liked being alone. And now, here, is where I’ve come to be hurt by it?”_

_*Pause. Wind in BG*_

_*Sadly* “I suppose it’s that it isn’t for real now. None of the things I do are really a life I’m living anymore, I’m just watching other people’s, because I’m too stubborn to quit trying until I know he’s safe, or dead. How bitter… Maybe it’s what I deserve, for getting to know people so unfairly fast. I was always poor socially in life. Most people couldn’t stand me. Perhaps the price for finally being able to know people well enough to grow close to them and to mourn them when they pass is that I must constantly be reminded how little I earned that closeness, and how entirely insignificant I am consigned to be to all of them, no matter how much I grow to care…”_

_*Irritated sigh. Leveler tone*_

_“Gods, I am wasting battery power on philosophy that’s only making me sad anyway. I was on Oliver.”_

_*Clears throat. Voice back to normal*_

_“I try to pry as little as possible, when learning about other survivors here, but sometimes I have to dig a little to know what I’m dealing with and find ways to help. So, Oliver, you’ll never know I did this to be angry with me for, but I’m offering you my silent apologies for digging around in your head. If I was ever to live a life so lucky as to meet you personally, I’ll happily let you deck me in return for the intrusion. *Mumbled* Honestly, you probably would anyway. I seem to get hit a lot…That’s neither here nor there. *Normal volume* Anyway, I did some digging into the boy—as little as I could and still get some idea of what the hell is going on with him, but I did. And dear, it is a nightmare in there. This poor boy is miserable all the time. Honestly, the realm’s been a bit of a detox for him, because he was taking way too much of a lot more than just alcohol when he got here. Cold turkey withdrawal is a right bastard, though, I should know, and he hasn’t been taking to it as well as you’d hope.”_

_*Pause. Sounds of faint voices, indiscernible*_

_“I wasn’t sure if there would be anything to work with, after how quickly the reset happened and how poorly it went, but he took some note of Philip on his own. Went and apologized to him, of all things, for being hurt because of him. Which…is good. It’s excellent, actually. The boy’s emotional state is a mess, but he’s smart. He’s smart, and it’s instinctive. He saw Philip bleeding out of an ear, and instantly knew it was the Entity punishing him for having helped the boy who thought he’d gone deaf. He doesn’t even **think** that’s what happened, he’s quite certain. I only hope there will be motivation to perhaps do something. The boy is…not doing so well himself. I believe that life has not been so kind to him. It rarely seems to have been, to the people who end up here. The Entity seems to prefer to take people who were isolated, and alone already, and will not be missed. It’s cruel. Especially because it prefers to take us so young. Many of these young people were simply still finding themselves. Claudette Morel was so anxious she had no in person friends, but she’s one of the most kind and thoughtful and interesting people I’ve ever seen. I feel quite certain if she had simply been allowed to exist in the world longer, she would have found people who’d have gone looking for her when she went missing.”_

_*Pause. Coughs. A wet cough, painful sounding*_

_*At a distance from recorder, muffled. Irritated* “Ow… Fuck me. I would love it if it’d let me heal. I’m so tired of getting blood in my lungs. It’s really distracting.”_

_*Close to recorder again*_

_“Ah well. The Entity is sadistic. *Smile in voice* This is not news. … *Exhales* Oliver…I don’t know a lot about him, even having dug. …He’s young, even aging some here, maybe…21? A child. Parents didn’t want him after he started to cause trouble, so they threw him out, and he got a job as a roadie working for some of the punk band he liked so much. I think he was happy doing that, for a while. Until he blew bones in his ears out accidentally at a show, and started slowly losing his hearing. The poor kid was a few steps from deaf when the Entity grabbed him… It must have been scary, losing a sense out there on the road, with no friends or family to know would have your back. Especially when music was your work. It must feel very lonely… But he did not go home, or find someone to trust. He just decided to become less likely to be lost and left behind by making himself the life of the party all the time, and taking so many risks with drug use and alcohol, it’s a bit of a wonder he lived long enough **to** be taken at all. I see him combining opioids with alcohol. Foolhardy little bastard, you could have died so easily just to drugs, and then what! *Tired and affectionate, muttered under breath at slight distance from recorder. Only a few words discernable through sound quality* Manne…….…gåffoeh…….jamme…… goegkedh… _

_*Sigh. Normal volume resumed*_

_“The boy also has more problems with authority figures than my dear Alex, which is saying too much! I pity the team leaders in that little survivor group for the teenage angst they must be getting undeserved… Well, at least compared to torture and death it’s probably not so bad. Oliver himself is a ticking time bomb though. He’s going to burn out fast and hard it no one intercedes, and join me here in the void before he knows it, to rot away in forgotten agony forever. … It’s a shame. I wish I had some way to help the boy, but he doesn’t even know of me, and I have almost no influence over…well, anything, anymore. What little I do have I need to consolidate for Philip. Still, I. …I do pity him. I think I even relate, in ways. Not to the alcoholism or drug use—oddly for an apothecary, I never really leaned into those to make life more livable, but I too know how it feels to be so easily replaced. I don’t…think I ever had someone who loved me outside of my family before coming here. And I was lucky to have what I did have. I was just always like I am in these recordings. *Smile in voice* Too much, for too long, and with one switch and one direction and a cement brick on the gas pedal. I get lost in what I find fascinating, and no one has time for that, which I’ve never quite understood? How can people have so little time to hear about what is fascinating, even if you don’t know it? I love to hear about almost anything, if it’s told interesting enough. …But ah well, it takes all the kinds to make a world, or whatever the saying is. I am digressing like I love to do, but Oliver is familiar to me in that way, so while I can’t do anything to help him, I truly wish him the best. I think it’s not as hopeless as **he** thinks it is. The boy is lucky enough to have people who actually do like him; the child just never takes his head out of his ass long enough to realize there are people who want to know him beyond his ability to be a parlor trick offering fleeting interest—and I mean that in the most loving possible way.”_

_*Deep, heavy sigh*_

_“I wish humans did not get so focused on trying to be useful. Oliver you little fool. If you always run at a break-neck pace to try to perform flawlessly as the accent piece you think people want in their living room, you will burn out in months, and never find anyone who is even given the chance to like the real you. Poor stupid bastard… I understand the frustration of not being liked, but you really just have to move on. People who are worthwhile will, and you’ll never be liked by anyone for real by just play acting at being fun to have around, you stupid depressed young boy. I feel like a man watching a horror film in a cinema and shouting at the empty scream to just ‘Look behind you!’ to an actor in a scene filmed months ago who would never hear me. …I hate this. I need to move on. But it’s so frustrating to watch a collision in slow motion from a distance and not be able to do a thing about it! I can’t believe he’s risked death to steal so many times from the Deathslinger’s realm. His desire to not have to feel like himself must be…truly monumental, and consuming. I am sorry for that. It’s a…It’s a very lonely way to feel. It feels hopeless, like you can’t fix it, because no matter how long you continue to scratch out a living, you will never cease being yourself, and it feels so truly in that moment when facing that knowledge that if you can never cease to be you, the suffering will just never end. Whatever you are looking for, you can’t find it, because the thing stopping you from all that you want is you, and you can’t beat that, or kill it. …I wish I could talk to him.”_

_*Silence. Hard to determine sounds in BG. Not human, but alive(?)*_

_“…I think he must have decided somewhere along the way that the best way to solve his problems was to pretend they didn’t exist. That’s never a great plan, by the way. No matter how fast you are or how many things you bury yourself under, you’ll be found eventually. Better to be facing whatever is coming for you when you’ve got to fight. I can’t feel anything but sympathy for his situation, though. Living that life, just to watch a most depended on sense begin to slip away? I would have been scared too. And lonely, in his shoes, very lonely. If your own family decides you’re not enjoyable enough to keep around, why would anyone else unless you work overtime to make sure of it? It would feel very clear there is no one who will not replace you as soon as you are no longer convenient, or something else suits their current desires more. …It’s sad. I may have my fair share of problems in life—I think we all have, but family was never one of those. My community was just my family, but it was a good one. I have no complaints to give, and in the end, that counts for a lot. I wish it was the same for us all… *sober* Hardly seems fair.”_

_*Odd spike of static. Some dialogue lost.*_

_“—that he would react so poorly to Philip helping him. It’s frustrating me greatly, because I was thinking until just now that that wasn’t bad and all, and I was going to have something to work with here, but I was so impressed by his sincerity, I forgot about the apathy. …Fuck, he’s probably not going to do a lot more now, is he? Philip reacted so negatively to his attempt at an apology, considering his strange way of thinking, he’ll probably keep his distance. Which means he’s not a solution after all, and now I’m going to have to keep looking. …But, it’s sweet just the same. In a…depressing way. That he would go and apologize for that. I like him for it. He has a funny way of thinking of things for a single act of kindness from a man who kills him for no reason at all to make him certain the man is a good person at heart and in a worse situation than he himself is, but there’s a logic to it, I admit. Just, not a brand of logic I think most of us ascribe to. I think Oliver is keen on making one single judgement call towards an event, and not checking his answers against others to make sure it was the correct one. Oof, I can’t talk there though. I can just hear my old friends mocking me really loudly right now. Well. Anyway, it seems unlikely the boy will continue to be a good source of preservation, although it bought us some time, but I’ll keep watch just in case. Who knows. Early days, and all that. It’s at least something new to think on.”_

_*Pause*_

_“…I. Wish I could help, I really do. I don’t have the energy to allocate, but I’m sorry, for the record. To take a look at your life and see you need help from someone, and then to turn my back. I know that wouldn’t do anything to make me less heartless to you, but. I really do wish you the best of luck, like so many I have had to turn away from, Oliver. I hope you listen to a friend and let them help you. It’s not much, but I’ll pray a blessing for you. That’s all I **can** do. I hope I won’t be seeing you soon.”_

_*Recording Clicks Off*_

* * *

_Okay, okay. Motherfucking got this._

Gingerly, Ollie shifted little bits of rope around, trying to make the hex totem come free. These were always super fucking annoying, because it was just some bones and a candle and rope and twigs and shit, and you should have been able to just step on the fucking things and crush them to dust, but it didn’t work. Kicking one was like trying to break a bollard with your foot, and would just smash your toes. The only way to break them was to unwrap the string bits and then tug on it so the whole thing collapsed, and it took _way_ too long. What was worse was that unlike a gen, if you quit working on a totem, the damn rope would wind itself back around everything and you’d have to start back from scratch if you let go, which was beyond irritating. He’d uh…he’d been so close to done he’d refused to run or so into the process he’d just been oblivious that he’d been ripped off totems before by a killer, especially the Spirit, and it wasn’t fun at all.

Technically, this could end up being a waste of time. Some killers pretty much never used totems, and this one wasn’t even lit, but some killers really liked the stupidass endgame curse that would light up once the gates were up and curse all of them to go down to a scratch like they’d been hit by a train, and as much as that one hex could ruin a whole good trial, it was just safe to get rid of any totem you saw, just in case. No totems left, no way for the hex to inhabit one and curse them once gates were up in the first place.

Back by the gen he’d been at before, Dwight was getting close to maybe 60% repair, judging by how much he could see of the gen was up and running so far. They’d been working it together before he’d spotted the totem. _Maybe I should have waited,_ thought Ollie nervously, _I could have done this after. I should have stayed to light the gen._

He should have. Just working with Dwight always made him feel on edge for some reason, so he’d picked the stupider play, like he always fucking did. Ollie started to mutter an insult at himself under his breath, when he saw it, and froze.

The Wraith. It was invisible, just a gliding shape, but he could see the slight distortion of its bulk in the air as it moved, and it was coming right for him. Frantic, Ollie quit working on ripping up the totem so the Wraith wouldn’t hear it, pressed himself as far into the side of the bushes he was nestled by as he could get, and held his breath, praying it was just checking everything on routine, but feet firmly dug into the ground to run if it got close enough. And it _got_ close enough—got almost right on top of him—but by the time it did, he could see it wasn’t looking at him at all, it was looking at the gen he’d been on with Dwight.

 _Shit, shit, shit!_ thought Ollie, turning to look as the Wraith passed him, _I didn’t warn him! Did he see it coming too?_

He couldn’t _see_ Dwight at the gen anymore, but it had obviously been worked on a lot, and there were boxes in the yard of the MacMillan estate around them. Dwight could be ducked behind the gen about to get fucked over for all he could see. _Come on come on._

Still forgetting to breathe even though it was safe now, Ollie watched the Wraith reach the gen and kick it, uncloaking as it did and sending the radius of terror that followed all the monsters cascading over him even at a distance. It turned and looked then, scanning the whole yard, then circled the boxes and nearby brush quickly, and apparently not finding wherever Dwight had vanished off to, finally turned and began to move back towards him. Suddenly very worried it _had_ seen him and had just been prioritizing the gen, Ollie slunk lower to the ground, praying it would pass, eyes fixed on its hulking form. It summoned the bell it used to cloak as it walked, and he felt immense relief, because if it was going to go invisible again, that meant it must not have seen him after all. And then behind it, in the distance, he saw Dwight make it silently to his feet where he must have hidden safely among a pile of boxes a little past where the gen was, and then watched in horror as trying to slide to the far side of the box he was crouched by, Dwight bumped an upright pallet.

Ollie saw it coming. Saw Dwight try to catch it, which was impossible—once you knocked one down, pallets suddenly weighed like they were made out of solid gold—saw it come crashing down into the boxes by it with a _THUD_ so loud even he could hear it from this far away, and the Wraith stopped, hand inches from ringing its bell. _Fuck, fuck._ Ollie winced and crouched lower, watching Dwight vanish behind the boxes again and knowing it wouldn’t be enough, _He’s so fucked—he’s so fucked!_

Quickly, the Wraith turned its head and looked. But not towards Dwight? No. It looked the wrong direction—it looked right first, past Ollie, and then turned and hurriedly scanned the whole area, like somehow it didn’t know _where_ to look. From where it was standing, a couple of trees out of Ollie’s way further to the left were obscuring its view of where the pallet had gone down, and somehow that was enough, and it _missed_ it. It turned a few times, searching, but searching like it wasn’t sure what it had heard, or like it had no idea at all which direction the sound had come from.

 _What the fuck?_ thought Ollie, heart beating uncontrollably and adrenaline pumping at a million miles an hour. _How_ had it missed that? How could anyone miss that? The thing _had_ to know what pallets sounded like—it had to know that could only be one of them!

And then, as it hesitated and turned one final time, back partially to him for a moment, Ollie saw the ear—the _left_ ear, with blood still somehow weeks later seeping out of it, and he knew then.

The Wraith vanished a second later, unable to find its prey, and disappeared into the night to check other gens, and Ollie stayed where he was in the bushes. He saw Dwight slide back out, looking even at a distance as confused as he’d felt, and still, he stayed. Not ready to go back and answer the questions he knew Dwight was going to ask. Because he knew. Honestly, he’d known the day he saw the Wraith with a bloody ear. It was too intentional, too pointed—it could only have been a punishment for helping him. But he’d thought…or…or hadn’t thought, maybe. Hadn’t realized it would be more than pain, or cosmetic damage, or blood. But it was, it had been, and it was lasting, and he _knew_ it now. The big silent thing had spared him one time, because he’d been so afraid it had felt pity, and the Entity had fucked up his hearing.

* * *

“We’ve been next to Autohaven for a few days,” Ollie said to the empty bottle of alcohol in his hands he wasn’t really looking at.

There was never anybody to talk to, but Ollie didn’t mind that. Nobody to talk to was better. Nobody to disappoint, nobody to regret telling a secret after you’d told it, nobody to judge you for what you chose to tell them or not to tell or how long you waited to do it.

Usually, Ollie didn’t even talk to himself. What was the point? He could be as mean to him as anybody else when he was feeling up to it, and the rest of the time, he’d just as soon not think about it as anything. A lot of the survivors wrote. He’d thought that was weird at first, because journals was a thing people did in like, movies and shit, but who the fuck kept one in real life except for a year when they were thirteen and hadn’t realized the movies were all fake yet and were just trying to live their teen years right, or some shit? Nobody, that’s who. Ollie’d had a little scrapbook he kept, but that was different. It was like—pictures, and ticket stubs, and signatures—mementos. Not personal ramblings somebody could read and know all your secrets and get you squarely in the back with.

But then, maybe a month after getting here, the oppression of the realm had settled on him, and he’d started to understand.

It was all so… _fucking_ endless. There weren’t even _days._ Sure, they pretended there were—they picked a time to call night, and slept through it, and created schedules and fake structure, and oh my _God_ he was thankful for whoever’s idea that had been, because without pretending days could still be a thing, the endless night would have been _fucking unbearable._ But still, even with that, the night was long and there was no variance. It was like being stuck in not just the same day, but the same hour, on an endless time loop, build just to kill you over, and over, and over again until you were all out of hope and fight and there was nothing left to take from you. And the really scary part of all that? Was that Ollie wasn’t totally sure that once you got that beaten, you even got to die. He…kind of suspected you didn’t. There had been a lot of bad weeks for him since arriving. I mean, how could there not be? Life consisted of being thrown into an arena to be brutalized by some horrible thing that more often in not took cruel pleasure in sawing into his back with a chainsaw or ripping out his organs to eat them while he watched or shocking the shit out of his brain until the only emotions left in the whole world were fear and confusion. It was hell. Like, with no exaggeration— _life was hell._ And he’d gotten close, he thought. To being all used up. But the closer and closer he got to that brink? The more he was just…terrified, of whatever was past it, because it didn’t feel like death. It felt _worse,_ and he didn’t want to know what it was going to be. God. It was all so much. But the fear of what happened if you quit trying had been enough to make him drag himself up and find alcohol and drink his way through another couple days, and then weeks, months—however long it had been. And he’d come to understand why people here all seemed to keep journals. There was just…nothing else. Recording time helped it feel like a real, tangible thing, that was still moving forward. Helped you believe you weren’t stuck in the same hour of hell, just waking up to do it again, and again, and again. They did it to stay _sane._ And so he—he’d tried it, at least a few times. Just written whatever the fuck in his little scrapbook, but god, how was that enough? Maybe it made you feel better for all of three minutes, but it didn’t really change a damn thing! Nothing did. No matter what you tried, or wanted, or managed to actually do for once, it was right back into a trial. Right back into torture, and death, and all kinds of awful he couldn’t even _think_ about. Hell wasn’t other people, it was the goddamn Entity’s Realm, and he couldn’t take it. Ollie had never understood how the others adjusted to it so well. I mean, it was obviously hard on them too, but they could _take_ it. He’d see them get fiery about it, see them pinned to the ground by a man three times their size, and start kicking and screaming and ripping at hair—biting, scratching, fighting to the very last. And he just…

He wasn’t _like_ that. He didn’t know _how_ to be.

Ollie was scared. He was…he was scared out of his _fucking mind_ here. If the Legion threw him on the ground and started to carve him up? He didn’t fight back. He curled up in a ball and cried. Or pleaded—or—or did both at once. It wasn’t like he wanted to die, but it didn’t matter. Fighting back didn’t help, and he was so scared. He just wanted it to be over. Wanted it to stop. Sometimes the agony of whatever the Plague was infected with got so bad that he’d just curl up in a corner and vomit and wait for her to come find him and kill him, because he just couldn’t take it anymore. Ollie always felt like that. Felt weak. And different. And wrong. Because he couldn’t take it.

Even though _everyone_ else had been there longer, he just couldn’t take it anymore, already. It was too much. And nobody else was like that. Some of them curled up and cried too—Claudette did that, and it had made him feel better the first time. But she got back up. She fought. She didn’t go find somewhere to be alone and drink until she couldn’t feel anything anymore. So…it really _was_ just him.

 _…Am I just worse?_ Ollie had wondered, swallowing and looking at the drops inside the empty bottle that were too few to condense and be swallowed, wishing the fog of alcohol the rest of the bottle had left him in felt better, like it did most days, _…I guess I am. I must be._

He wished it wasn’t true. It felt fucking terrible. But what could he do about it? _Am I really? Am I that much worse? Or just a little bit? …_

 _Look, you’re not worse,_ he tried to tell himself after a second, _You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not your fault everything’s terrible. What are you supposed to do about that?_ He wasn’t sure if he was right or not, about either take, but it wasn’t really helping him feel better or get anywhere. Which somehow, had brought his mind circling back around to the fact Meg had bullied him into a jog, and they’d passed Autohaven again. It had been weeks since they’d been adjacent, but the realms shifted periodically, and it was back.

“We’ve been next to Autohaven for a few days,” whispered Ollie to the bottle of alcohol he wasn’t looking at, using the dirty brown glass as a surrogate for the journal he didn’t trust enough to write. Words you just said, those could make you feel better and go away. Words you put to paper? Anybody could find those. Could use them against you later. It wasn’t worth it. But God, he needed to talk or to act, and he didn’t know what to do, so talk it was, to an empty bottle of stolen whisky.

“I’ve thought about going a couple times. But….what would I do?” He looked up from the bottle and stared deadly into the woods, trying to drink up the way his senses felt deadened and find some comfort in the fog in his brain. For once, failing at even that. “I dunno,” he answered himself quietly, since there was no one else to do it.

Ollie stood up. Then hesitated again, and leaned back against the tree he’d been sitting at the base of, lost in thought. “You know what?” he asked the few drops of alcohol left in the bottle, the remnants of the only thing that had been his unjudging companion the last few years, sole real comfort through all of this. He lowered the bottle and looked out of the nearby trees, listening to the wind and not really hearing it. Trying to hear it—seeing the way the bows bent and the leaves moved, but deaf to a sound so quiet, even here. “What’s really fucked?” he continued, voice even lower, barely a whisper now, “I hate it here. I hate it so goddamn much. Like everybody else, who spends all those hours talking about ways to get home that lead nowhere, and feeling better for a few minutes when they think maybe they’ve got one percent of a plan. I do. I hate it.” He paused, just breathing for a second, only passively aware that his eyes were beginning to sting and his voice sounded choked when he spoke again, even at a whisper. “But I’m afraid to leave.”

For a moment, Ollie just lived in how those words felt, listening to them echo around his head. “Fuck,” he whispered, smiling a little at the empty woods, “Right? That’s pretty awful.” He glanced down blearily at the empty bottle in his hand. “But it’s true. Because before all this, I was going deaf, and it was only a matter of time before I lost my hearing completely, and lost all my friends and my job too. But here? It lets me hear again. Fuck,” he admitted, shifting against the tree, “not totally, sure. Mostly it’s just whatever shit people have going on that’s magic. But I’m not losing the rest of my hearing anymore. And it gave me _people_ back. I can hear them again.” He smiled again, almost for real this time, thinking about that. “Voices. Like I can read their thoughts when they talk to me—get the words beamed right into my head. No more asking people ‘What?’ thirteen times and then giving up and pretending to have heard it—no ringing I get afraid won’t go away, no more missing out on it all! And they _need_ me.”

Pushing off the tree, Ollie took a few steps in no real direction, just moving to be moving now. “Even like this, I’m better on a team than nobody, and I’ve got some skills. I’m _useful._ And I’m never gonna _stop_ being useful. Plus—they _can’t_ leave,” he added as a consoling afterthought, “None of us can. So I’m set. I mean—I’m not insane,” he hurried to explain to the bottle, “I wouldn’t stay here if a door opened to let me go home or something. But.” Slowly, the smile faded. His shoulders slumped. “But what would happen after that?” Ollie asked the no one in the woods. “I mean. It would have to be better—it could only be,” he consoled himself quietly, thinking it all through out loud for the first time, “No more torture every day. Worst comes to worst, if I got so bad, I’d be able to kill myself again back home in the world. But uh…”

Fuck, where had he been going with this? _What am I doing,_ thought Ollie hopelessly, looking at the empty bottle he was still holding and had been telling way too much personal information to for some reason, _It’s not gonna help me to talk through this shit. It doesn’t matter what would happen next anyway, because we’re never getting out of here. We’re just all gonna rot slowly until whatever comes next is finally something we run out of the stamina to keep ahead of, and it gets us too._

_…Fuck it._

Ollie tossed the empty bottle off to his right without looking and exhaled, then plunged his hands into the pockets of his black denim jacket, and started to walk.

* * *

It wasn’t far enough to Autohaven for him to change his mind.

Ollie didn’t really have a purpose in mind wandering over there. He just had to walk, and walking past there had somehow felt like it might do something for him. Make him think a little better maybe. As he got close though, Ollie started to feel a little apprehensive, and he slowed down and went more cautiously, about the last thing on earth he wanted to be seen out there looking in. He hadn’t heard it until he got _very_ close, but there was a faint sound coming from the realm?

 _Fuck—what is that?_ he wondered, straining his ears and moving carefully through the trees as he neared the border, trying to get a glance inside. _It’s too quiet. Fuck. I can’t make shit out._ He _knew_ he’d heard something, but the Entity’s little hearing interference box only seemed to help with magic or trial-related stuff and people talking. Most mundane noises were exactly as muffled as they had ever been. There had _definitely_ been something, though, right?

As he neared the very end of their area and the start of the Wraith’s, Ollie finally saw him. The Wraith himself, standing out there in the middle of the autoyard in front of the ancient garage, moving around in the yard, and he froze and watched, because there was something unexpected about the scene, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it or what exactly the guy was doing.

Out in the autoyard, the Wraith reached a point near the center of the clearing by the garage and stopped, then lifted a large bright white stone in its hand to feel its weight, closed its eyes, and turned in a few quick circles, launching the stone up and out as it did. It took two more rotations, then stopped about a second before the stone hit the ground, off to the far right ahead of the direction it had ended facing, and it stayed stock-still with its eyes shut and head cocked a little… _Listening for it,_ realized Ollie, eyes widening, _He’s. Practicing._

The Wraith turned with its eyes shut, head tilted, and moved a little right, towards where the sound was, but then went much to far, to about a five o’clock, instead of the two o’clock from his original position where the rock had landed, and opened his eyes. He glanced around, looking for the rock, and visually located the bright white object quickly in the grass back to his left, and he exhaled, and his shoulders slumped, then he walked over to the little object and tiredly lifted it into his hand again and walked back towards the middle of the clearing.

“Hey.”

The Wraith spun on high-alert, looking for the source of the sound, and couldn’t find him.

 _Right._ Ollie took a step right, further out of cover, hoping it would catch the movement, and it did, as he slid into place in the open. The towering thing that had cut him down in so many trials before looked up and stared at him, grip tightening unconsciously around the little rock.

“You can’t actually help it so much by practicing,” said Ollie casually, hands deep in his pockets and only glancing up every other second as he addressed the Wraith, “It’s better to get used to relying on other stuff—like your vision. It sucks, but, uh.” He shrugged a little. “Better to lean into what you do have than try to make your ears do what they aren’t gonna. You can get a little more used to that.”

The towering figure a few yards off twitched, and gaped at him. It was really hard to read an expression past the mask or whatever it was the Wraith had on its face that made it look so tree-like, but Ollie suddenly felt pretty sure from body language alone this was disbelief and also maybe anger. _Yeah, shit, I should have seen that coming. I don’t know if I’d want unsolicited advice from somebody. I’d probably just be embarrassed and mad they caught me practicing._

“And uh, sorry,” offered Ollie, risking a quick glance and trying to sound casual and like none of this was a big deal at all, because it wasn’t of course, and it wasn’t gonna matter anyway, but.

The Wraith looked even more taken aback.

“That it did that to you,” added Ollie, glancing up to wherever the Entity went when it wasn’t eating people, then back at the Wraith, “Because of me. You shouldn’t have tried to help me; if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have gotten fucked over, and helping me’s not worth getting fucked over.”

The thing was still just gawking at him, but uh, the emotion radiating off of its still form was _not_ a positive one, so Ollie gave a quick nod, ducked his head, turned and speed-walked back out of there, heart beating a little too fast. Not waiting for whatever real reaction that might prompt, because it was _not_ gonna be a good one.

* * *

Philip Ojomo. Entry 15,042

The boy who is half deaf came by again.

I cannot fathom what has made him begin to do this. Initially, I thought the only possible reason could be to manipulate me. I’ve heard from the Iska how likely they are to do this, and it has happened before. ~~But what’s odd is that he,~~ No, there is more than one thing that is odd about it. He came to me first outside a trial, and apologized. Said that he was sorry I had been hurt because of him, and that no one should have to be hurt on his behalf, and then hurried away, which was a relief, because I do not know how I am meant to respond to that. I should probably hold my weapon threateningly, or shout at him perhaps, but we aren’t meant to talk to the survivors, and it’s been so long since I last spoke English I am very nervous that were I to do it again I would do something fundamentally and ignorantly wrong, so it is hard to make myself. I think it must be years since I spoke much at all, and then it has only been to the Iska itself in Hausa. I could threaten though. I should probably. But I have not had to. The boy has come by my realm six times now, and each time he will offer a quick word of advice, and then scatter with tail between his legs like a kicked dog without waiting for any response at all. He just keeps…trying to offer me advice. On dealing with this injury to my ear.

I can’t understand it. How he found out at all is a mystery to me! Though, I suppose I have made enough errors in recent trials, perhaps I am simply more see through than I think. And I cannot get the blood to stop, though it should have weeks ago.

And still. Even knowing that, how…? What is he hoping to accomplish? He never asks me for anything at all, just appears, tries to give me a few words of advice on living with hearing loss, and then is gone again. Still he does this. After the first time he spoke to me, I hunted him down with a vengeance in my next trial, to dissuade him from the idea he could use me, but he came again, later the same night. So I did it again, I hunted him first, and I hunted him brutally, and still, two days later, he was back again. I did this several times, but I have stopped, because it is not effecting him, and it is beginning to feel cruel. I know, I know that that is weak and foolish and sentiment I am not allowed to have here, and never should have to anyone who might have ended up here, considering the evils they must have done in life, and yet. Gods, every time he sees me in a trial, he is miserable with guilt. I have never, ever had one of these souls look at me with guilt before. It feels so strange to see it. The boy is still afraid of me, and of pain, and those are as evident as the rest, but the first expression is always guilt now. Always. And how can that be possible? What, if he were even the sort of man to feel guilty, could he possibly be guilty for?

I don’t know. I don’t—I can’t figure it out. He has said more than once he is sorry for causing me to be hurt, but I don’t know how that could be possible, I do not remember what transgression I was punished for.

I don’t. I…I often don’t remember clearly. Often I only have foggy memories of what transpired after I receive a penalty here. I think the pain from a punishment must cause me to black it out. And all I remember of this one is that I listened to someone’s plea and let them go. I cannot even remember which it was, it’s almost all gone, and that is all the Iska said to me after. But with that the case, I suppose then it is possible after all that he is speaking the truth. Isn’t it? I cannot remember what I did to make the Iska have to punish me, but if I stayed my hand for a trick, it could as easily have been this one as any other. And it is insane for him to think I would believe his apology after being tricked and punished for falling for it, because surely the only reason someone who did that would apologize is in the hopes of either avoiding retribution, or being able to trick me again, but it could have been him I was punished for listening to.

And listening being my failing, I suppose losing my hearing in one of my ears is a fitting, if hard punishment.

It has been so difficult to bear the load I am meant to without one of my ears. I can hear sounds fine, but I can no longer tell which direction they come from, and I feel in nearly every way it would be better have little hearing at all then to live like this. It is so difficult to be a reaper now—I used to rely on my ears almost as much as my eyes, and now they play more tricks than they assist me.

A hard punishment indeed. I am sorry. I am very sorry for failing it. I wish that was enough to eventually merit mercy, but I have never once had a wound repaired once it has been given. I have many scars for all of my failings, and I am very afraid I will never retrieve my hearing again either. Not like it was. Not in a way I can really use it.

I hate how it make me feel to be so much weaker here. It is very isolating, to have to live so differently from before. I suppose the point was to leave a lasting impression on me. It has certainly done that.

If it is true though, and the boy is responsible, it makes even less sense for him to come and apologize this way. He can’t know my memories after a punishment are foggy, but drawing attention to himself would be beyond foolhardy. Though, I suppose he may assume I would seek retribution anyway, and be trying to cut down on it. I have thought that one over a lot, because it nearly makes sense.

But only nearly.

Gods, this is miserable. I wish to listen to my gut, but doing so in the past has always only eventually landed me in so much pain and suffering and regret it is hard to think on.

Maybe he could be coming again and again to try to manipulate me to pity. To try to save his own skin. I guess that does make the most sense after all. But he is _so_ miserable. Every day I see him. In trials, on the edge of my home. He always looks as if he wishes he was dead already, and not in the way all souls do to some extent, like the suffering has become too much, but like he has felt that way for years and years before coming here even. I guess probably he has, if high and drunk and falling apart and just a little numb to it all is the happiest he ever was in life. It’s his ideal form here, so Gods, it must have been. What kind of a life?

I have lived many bad days, but if I ended up in this hell for the sins I have committed, I know I would be different. I would be the version of me from the night I left for America. Young, but old enough to have strength of my own. Nervous, but hopeful, and with a purpose and a map in my head for a better future. I liked how that man felt. I he felt like he really might actually have a future this time. He was carrying little gifts and pictures from his family as proof there were people who would always love him. He still had so much hope, even in that hell of a world, and not out of desperation. He really did. Even after all the suffering in his life.

I liked that man.

Even with all the horrors in my own history, I know I could have found a day like that to be forever in this place; a version of me who could give me hope. And all this boy has is damaged youth and a fog of addicted numbness to dim the world the way his damaged hearing dims the sound of it.

That is a pitiable thing indeed. It is hard to think on.

It would help so much if I knew what he’d done. I suppose I could ask the Iska, and it would probably tell me. But as foolish and selfish as it is, I almost don’t want to know.

I have not known anyone in a long time. I have no human contact, no friends, no real life. It is just an endless cycle of acting as an angel of death in this awful place that the light cannot reach. And he comes almost every day to my realm to offer some little tip about dealing with sounds I cannot hear right, or learning to lean more on my vision, and if I knew what a monster he was in fact I would have to turn him away and hate him. I should want that. I know I should. But I am so very alone. I wish I could live in the idea of some kind of human contact again. Gods, it is truly no wonder the Iska resorted to such extreme punishment this time; I am beyond weak. Probably I am so incurably.

Even so. I think it is not _just_ me. The boy keeps coming, no matter how much I make him pay for it. He keeps looking at me with misery and guilt. And isn’t it just a little bit possible, as dead and empty as I have become existing in this place, that a human could move in the other direction? That someone could suffer enough to find guilt for the first time, and then remorse, and with it, some small ability to change? It could almost make sense even, after all this time, if the way I was hurt was what reached him. If suffering here so long, so much specifically because we are hard to hear, he might feel just a little kinship, and just a little guilt, with someone he sees himself in? Don’t we all do that a little: feel deeper towards the people we see some ripple of us or those we love in the reflection of? It is possible, at least. But I know it is unlikely. I find such foolish things to hope on. Perhaps it will just be enough to stop targeting him so much. I can feel at ease, and fulfil my duties as well, and what happens will wash over me like it always does.

* * *

_*Recording Clicks On. Static. Sound Quality: Medium*_

_*Same speaker. Masculine, mid-range, adult. Scandinavian*_

_“I am ECSTATIC. This could not have taken a turn for the better! AH! Oliver! Gutten min, I can’t believe it! This is truly just—it’s so much better than I was expecting. Oliver, I’m sorry I passed so quickly on the idea you would do anything else. You seemed to heartbroken to act—but I was wrong, your guilt beat out your sadness, and you did!”_

_*Deep intake of breath*_

_“So much has happened. I didn’t know speaking to Philip would spiral out like this, but he has been back for a full week now! Hah! And Philip is softening, because of course he is; Elskede, I know you, you soften too quickly for anyone, and I couldn’t love it more about you. He’s officially moved on from trying to get the boy to stop, but it’s better than that. Oliver is trying to help Philip, in the strange broken way he seems to understand this situation and yet still want to—of all the things—I’m going to go on my own rant about Oliver again later. Something else, that one. –but anyway, he’s going out of his way to be kind, and I know Philip. He is not a man who forgets kindness, or lets it act alone. I know where this is going. And I am thrilled.”_

_*Recording Clicks Off*_

* * *

It had been weird, lately. How everything had suddenly started going.

For a couple of days, Ollie had been in hell, because talking to the Wraith at all had been a really bad idea, and the guy had tunneled him every trial and it was not hard to break Ollie—he did not have a high tolerance for pain or a fighting spirit once the agony began, and he went down fast, and hard, and sorry. And still, he’d gone back. Because he understood, if the guy was mad about what had happened to him—he got it. I mean, if he’d had _one person_ to blame about his own hearing loss, well—fuck like, Ollie didn’t think he’d have _killed_ them or anything, but he’d sure as shit have loved the feeling of taking a couple swings at their face. But uh, he kind of only had himself to blame. Or to swing at.

So he’d gone back. Because he’d owed the guy, right? And he got it—like, dealing with hearing loss in a trial was _SHIT,_ and he felt responsible, and it wasn’t like stuff could get much worse if he did, and at least then maybe the guilt would go away and he could feel better, right?

And uh. It was weird to say this about anything, ever, but uh, Ollie kind of _did._ He hadn’t felt any better at all at first. Meg and Dwight and even Kate, who was usually super chill, had kind of been all up in his business the past few weeks, and he got they were worried about him because of the Wraith, but like, he was fine! How many times did he have to say that, right? It was cool. No problems, no issues, no crazy depression they had to worry about. He was cool. He was _always_ cool, and if he wasn’t, well, then he’d go take care of that with himself and a bottle of pills or a bottle of whisky, and he would be again. It wasn’t so complicated, you know? And yeah! He’d been miserable, okay, sure! But so was everybody, always, and he wasn’t in some terrible spiral—he wasn’t like that. He was chill. He was always chill. So it had been getting really fucking annoying they all seemed to not think so too. Jane Romero had almost cornered him alone _four times_ this week, and if that happened, from what he’d seen? You were fucking _done for_. She was like a shark smelling blood in kiddie pool if there was even a _little_ something wrong with you, and Ollie did _not_ want her to start trying to figure _him_ out. That could only end _super_ terribly. So uh, he’d started avoiding people even more than usual one-on-one, and tried to exist in big groups, or alone whenever he had to go drink or something. And it had been a not super fun couple of days.

But then? The Wraith had just kind of…stopped tunneling him, for some reason. Like, gone totally back to normal. And he had been _so_ relieved—he’d thought maybe that meant it wasn’t as mad anymore, and he’d gone like, right after the trial to try and offer a little more advice. –That was actually harder than you’d think, because having one ear work and the other not at all was super different from having both ears work shitty, but he put a lot of time into thinking through whatever coping skills had worked for him, and picking out ones that would work for them both, and then trying to pass them along in succinct enough doses the Wraith wouldn’t have a chance to like, throw something at him to make him go away.

And then.

Then there had been a trial, okay? Right, like—Ollie still couldn’t really wrap his head around this. But there had been a trial, and it had been a day Ollie was like, feeling pretty good. He’d had the Shape the day before, and only had one trial, which already made a day better than normal, and one trial with the Shape was _great_ for three reasons—one, _nobody_ could hear that fuckin guy, so he wasn’t at an immediate extra disadvantage; two, the Shape killed like, faster and more painless than _any_ killer—or any hook death—and the guy liked to mori; and three, for some fucking surreal reason Ollie had barely even managed to clock, let alone understand, the Shape kind of seemed to…take it easy on him? Totally that hadn’t been a thing initially—like, at all. It was all the exact same for everybody, except poor Laurie, who was up for like an Iron Man marathon challenge every time she drew him in the lottery, but a few months in, he’d suddenly noticed the Shape just kind of…wasn’t so hard anymore? And he hadn’t changed strategy _at all._ He’d still been even newer, and even more fucked up and freaked out about being here. But suddenly the Shape was like, just not looking his direction anymore, and he was almost _always_ last man standing in those trials. So it was about his favorite possible draw right now. And it had gone great! They’d actually gotten three out alive, everybody but Laurie, which for a Shape trial? Was uh, a _fucking_ good record to pull. I mean, poor Laurie, but…He’d try to help her out extra hard next time they had a trial together or something.

Anyway, he’d been in a great mood, and Jeff and Adam had had the trial with him and Laurie, and they were both super happy with him because he’d managed to slam the Shape with a locker door when he was taking Adam to a hook, _and_ lit the last generator and gotten a door just in time for Jeff to make it out with the Shape right on his heels. And usually Adam kind of seemed a little too like, intellectual and above it all to notice that kind of shit to Ollie, but he’d been _super_ appreciative, and asked for tips because he wasn’t so good at that himself, and like, actually been way chiller than Ollie thought, and Jeff had bragged on him, and even Laurie had been glad, because the other three made it, so it had been a nice evening. And the next trial he’d gotten had been pretty early in the ‘morning,’ or what the survivors pretended was a morning anyway, and he hadn’t been like, psyched, because fucking nobody would _ever,_ and he meant _ever,_ be anything but kind of despairing to be dragged into another trial. But uh, he’d been okay. He’d felt kind of confident, from last night, so he’d just gone in. Hadn’t even snuck a couple mouthfuls of whisky to try and take the edge off. And then he’d been on a gen in the cornfield, and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and known something was coming, and whipped around to look, and there had been a shimmering form moving through the corn for him that could _only_ have been the Wraith, and he’d fuckin felt his heart skip a beat, because uh, _that_ wasn’t good, and like, sure, okay, last two trials he’d been chilled out a little and not tunneled him, but he had no idea if this would happen again or not! And he’d suddenly been uh, been kind of wishing that he _had_ downed something to take the edge off. Then the Wraith had been on top of him, and he’d bolted as it uncloaked, and it had _lost_ him. And Ollie didn’t mean _lost_ as is ‘given a good chase and then not found him again’—he meant it like, went right past four seconds after heading in his direction, and didn’t look back. It wasn’t like, _ignoring_ him or something, it must have just been super off its game, because it wasn’t just him either. They’d _all_ had stories just like that when they made it back to the campfire—and yeah—‘they’ meant _all_ of them! All four! That was fucking _rare,_ but they’d done it! And like, it hadn’t even been a _painful_ trial. He’d gotten hooked zero times, and smacked in the back with the sickle once, while rescuing Ace. That was…that was almost having a trial without a scratch! And he _could not_ have been more pumped!

It had been on them all a lot, even if it was off its game, and Ollie had had to fuckin endurance run around that cornfield some, but he’d managed to be the one least detected, and lit _four_ of the gens! Two by himself! It had been like, fucking prom king status back at the campfire for a couple hours, and he’d just been like, really happy! For once. No downsides, no tricks, no resources he had to meet out carefully to not let go dry, no judgement. Just happy.

But like. It _hadn’t_ been a one-time occurrence, either! Second Wraith trial two days later was really the same for him. Like, not _everybody_ had escaped that one, but it had been like…way more painless than usual? He’d seen Jake get snagged by the back of his neck and slung on a hook, instead of cut down with the sickle, which was uh—weird, and kind of spooky, because they usually didn’t do that, but at least it _hurt_ a lot less. Doubly weird because there had been a Wraith trial in-between too, that Ollie hadn’t been in, and they’d said the Wraith was exactly like normal, so he’d been super surprised when his next trial had also kinda been a walk in the park compared to normal. Although, uh, to be fair, it wasn’t like _all_ the trial’s he had since that first weird trial had been good so far. –Like, maybe four days later, he’d had a bad morning and taken a Wraith trial wasted, and it had been a great trial for everybody _but_ him, same as before, but him? The Wraith had been _on. his. ass._ the whole trial, and Ollie had been sacrificed, and kind of depressed that the nice stint of Wraith trials must be over, and then the other three had made it out alive, and asked him what happened to him, and Ollie had decided to take a _serious_ look at just how fucking impaired his skills were when he was drunk, because that was the only variable in the equation.

Probably they hurt him a lot more than he thought, actually… But like, he could _not_ just quit. Not like he _couldn’t_ of course! Ollie could quit any time that he wanted. He wasn’t an _addict._ Just like, he was pretty depressed sometimes, or okay, maybe that was extreme—he was fine. He was usually super chill. But like, it sucked here, right? So he needed to medicate somehow. And like, he tried going a few days with no alcohol, but then he kept having shitty ass Cannibal trials and the fucking chainsaws were so weird with his hearing, and so he’d you know, needed to feel better, and he had! But he’d had _another_ Wraith trial where he’d been just run ragged, and died, but everybody else said the Wraith was easy like before, and were kind of suddenly all worried and like, “Dude, how much did you _drink_ if it was finding you easily?” and he uh, hadn’t wanted to talk about that, and had laughed it off and made some really killer jokes about taking a bullet for them all, and paying for what you love, and then found some alone time to think about it. Because like, fuck, _was_ he that much worse drunk?

…His friends thought so, for sure. Or something. Because a lot of them were kind of one-vague-politeness-remaining away from riding his ass about it. He’d _definitely_ been drinking too much right when he first got here. But he was handling it fine, right? He’d thought. He thought…

But the Wraith _wasn’t_ mad at him, so that was good. It had stopped looking so infuriated when he showed up to try and offer some advice. It was like, neutral now, which was the most positive a killer was _ever_ gonna get towards him, and if he was being honest, not too bad for him in general at all.

And honestly, he’d tried keeping the alcohol to a bare minimum, like, only during the golden-gap when they were least likely to get a trial, or right _after_ a super bad one, and he’d been kind of needing it less too, if he was honest, which was pretty great, because he could conserve his supply for when he really needed it if he was feeling good right now, instead of fucking around and finding out every time he hit Glenvale in search of a good alcohol restock.

It was…weird feeling like this, honestly. He felt like, kind of _light_ on the inside. It had been so long since he felt this way, he wasn’t even sure what that meant anymore. Content? Something like that. I mean, as much as he could in this hell-hole. But uh. It had been _really_ good, if he was honest. Like, _really_ good.

Several trials recently, with the Wraith, he’d managed to pull off shit he wasn’t that good at usually too—he’d managed to blind the Wraith with a flashlight like, six times in two matches, and saved several of his friends from being dragged to hooks, and everybody had been telling him how clutch he’d been, and really happy, even, to have him get drawn for a trial with them, instead of how they must have used to feel, getting a handicap right out the gate. It was different. It was better. He’d been doing really well in Wraith trials, and getting a lot of them, and doing decently better in all the others too, he thought—bar a few, because sometimes luck just didn’t go your way, but. Yeah. It was a real stroke of luck!

And you know, he’d _kind_ of wondered, just a little, if part of it was that the Wraith was taking it easy on him now—well, okay, he _knew_ the Wraith was taking it easy on him—on all of them. But uh, he wondered a little if maybe it could be because he’d been going to talk to it—to him?

It felt like, really fucking stuck up to think a killer could possibly be like, so…he didn’t fucking know, grateful? Touched? Uhhh, something? That it might like, _care_ he came to give it advice. Or that it might actually _like_ him—like, come on, that was nuts, right?

But.

But he kinda thought it _did._

God, it was so fucking _weird_ to think that, right? Or to be thinking about the Wraith so much _period,_ but here he was. And…it was stupid, it was really, _really_ stupid, but he was kind of the happiest he’d like, ever been in the realm?

He knew it was dumb—he knew it was. But like. What was he supposed to do about that? He couldn’t help this had happened. And he…he _was_ happy. He was. Or, something like it. It was like…it was like…

Fuck. He kept trying not to _think_ this, because it was always the last thought right before something would go very wrong, but it felt like having a friend.

It did. It really did. Kind of his first one here, too.

Which of course that wasn’t true—the others all liked him. But like…he didn’t know. _I guess,_ thought Ollie, for once having this thought and not feeling too down about it, _I guess I just always kind of know in the back of my mind that they have to like me okay, right? Because they need me to stay useful, and they can’t get rid of me. And like—I am useful, and they do like me, but like, I dunno. None of them know me super fucking well. Which is for the best, probably, because that shit doesn’t end too well—once people have reasons to hate you, they do, and they’re gone forever. But the Wraith already hated my guts, and I’m not useful to him at all, and now he seems to kind of like me anyway, so. _So it was nice. To like, he didn’t know, to—to feel valued for himself or something, which was sappy and goofy, and honestly, he didn’t even know if the Wraith _did_ like him, or why it was doing all this, but like, the guy seemed…decent. Really decent, because he’d wanted to show mercy, and he had, just because he’d felt bad. And somebody shitty wouldn’t do that, he was sure, so he was a good guy, and he’d made Ollie’s life better for _some_ reason, and he’d take it. He was happy to take it. It was going well. And it had been going well for at least what had to be like, two or three months or something now. Which meant it wasn’t just a fluke, it was a real thing, and he was happy about it. He could have sworn the last time he went to go visit Autohaven, the Wraith had almost looked happy to see him for a second behind that mask before it had gone all wooden and neutral like it always did. He was almost sure of it, and it had made his chest feel warm. It was good. It was _really_ good. And he was _happy_ about it. He really was. Nothing this good had ever like, felt like it was so motivated on its own to just, just fucking actually stay.

He was _really_ happy.

Ollie hadn’t been to see the Wraith yet today, because he’d been mulling over what to tell him. He was thinking it would be cool to maybe have something physical to give him, since he was going to run out of advice eventually, and the dude had _definitely_ been pulling his punches lately, and Ollie was super grateful for that, but like, survivors didn’t have much that killers would _want_?

Pretty much all they got was stuff for like, fixing generators, or flashlights, or offerings to give them a little bit of luck and shit. But he’d thought about it, and since the guy’s ear wouldn’t quit bleeding, and it had be annoying to feel that all the time, in the way it was annoying to get a nose bleed, he’d thought he could bring a little medkit maybe—some padding for the ear, and bandages to wrap it in place with? That was practical, and it’d probably help him focus, too. And…if he didn’t like it, he probably wouldn’t be pissed anyway, because it was a decent idea. _I think he’ll like it,_ decided Ollie, both proud of himself for the plan and _really_ fucking embarrassed for taking like eight weeks to think of it.

“Hey! Where you headed?”

Pausing mid-step with the medkit in his hands, Ollie turned to glance, and saw Kate watching with a smile from about fifteen feet off where she was relaxing against a tree and writing something or sketching. _Shit. Think of a lie._

His stupid fucking body locked up instead. _Fuck._

“As much as you vanish beamin’ these days, I’d think you had a secret girlfriend or somethin’, but we’re all here right now,” said Kate with a friendly, teasing smile, “You ever gonna tell me, or is it a big old secret?”

 _Oh. Shit—should I?_ Maybe he should. I mean, they should probably know the Wraith wasn’t so bad, so they could be nicer to him, right? He’d been hesitating to say anything for a super long time because he’d been afraid something might fall through, and he’d tell them just in time for it to change, but it had been months, and like, the only reason to not would be they’d all have to live knowing the poor Wraith was some semi-decent dude being forced to murder, right? Which…would be better to know than not? He… _I need like, four minutes to think about that._ “I’ll uh—I’ll _probably_ tell you,” said Ollie, trying to mimic her playful tone, “When I get back. If I’m still in the mood.”

“Still in the mood,” echoed Kate, raising an eyebrow, “Which mood?”

“The good one,” said Ollie with a grin, backing away from the campfire.

She sighed good-naturedly and waved him off. “Alright, whatever. Can’t believe you won’t tell your own surrogate older sister all your secret life details. Can’t you at least keep a diary so I can cheat and peek?”

“That is _exactly_ the reason I _don’t_ keep a diary,” said Ollie, trying to process she’d just called herself his sister and trying to fucking like, _load_ ‘Kate Denson the famous country musician thinks of me as her little brother’ into his fucking head. It almost crashed the system.

“Damn. Beatin’ the system,” said Kate, who probably had too much decency to actually steal a diary, but was having some real fun playing with him, “Alright then. Keep a good mood, why don’t you? I’ve been curious for too long.”

“I can’t make any promises,” said Ollie, grinning and trying to get through the way his adrenaline was rushing as he finally processed the fact that must mean Kate liked him at least pretty well too, for real, “But I’ll see what I can work out.”

She grinned at him, and he smiled back before vanishing into the forest towards where Autohaven had shifted to, medkit in hand, and even more happy than before. He felt light, like so many weights he usually felt all over were gone. He didn’t even care he couldn’t hear the breeze through the trees and the bows bending around him, or the grass and leaves crunching beneath his feet. He could see them, and they were beautiful. And he was happy.

* * *

_*Recording Clicks On. Sound quality: normal*_

_*Speaker masculine, mid-range, adult. Scandinavian*_

_*Voice heavy with emotion. Speaker sounds as if he has been crying*_

_“…Fuck.”_

_*Uneven breathing*_

_“Vennen min. *Deep breath* I couldn’t stop it. I saw it happening, I saw it coming, and I couldn’t stop either one of them.”_

_*Pause*_

_“Fuck. …fuck.”_

_*Pause, breathing in BG. Distant sounds of human suffering*_

_“It happened. Like it always happens. Like it has before, and will again. He lost all of it. I am so…heartbroken, and enraged, watching the lives he fights to leave be ripped from him again and again. And I can do nothing to stop it. I cannot save him. *Voice integrity lost* He’s like was again. He’s like he was again…Months ago, fuck. Before any of this went well. Back to cold and empty and losing himself. And he got better. He thought, and he cared, and he worked for it. He loved the boy, I think. He had a little brother already; I think there is a part in siblings that sees the desire to protect people like their own in others younger than them naturally—certainly in Philip. I would almost have thought of him more as a son in his shoes, but I am not in my shoes, and now neither is he.”_

_*Speaker loses ability to continue. Burst of static, then breathing*_

_“Neither is he. *Exhale* Fuck. Like so many before. And gods. The poor boy. Venn, I am sorry. I am very sorry you have become a casualty in this fight. I would have saved you if I knew how. I would have warned you. Fuck.”_

_*Pause. Swallows*_

_“You know I have been watching them both for months. Watching this become something both of them felt, because they are so alone it was a lot to have a human contact that sought you out and liked you even a little bit. And it’s gone. It’s all of it gone, and he doesn’t understand why, and it’s going to break him. I saw him return to the campfire. He was…silent. That boy is never silent. *Affectionate laugh that becomes not a laugh* It is like all the progress he made is erased in an instant as well. The worst is that this is what he feared. He feared above all else to trust and love someone, and to be discarded. And it’s so unfair. *Heavy emotion* He was not. *Breath* Betrayed. Or discarded. It didn’t happen. It wouldn’t. I know my Kjære. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter he didn’t pull the trigger and never would, because my little broken Venn will never know, and it will not make sense. And there will no one who remembers to tell him.”_

_*Pause. Sniff. A few seconds of silence*_

_“Gods, I wish I could help you. I want to. Kjære you have lost so much, and I know it is on me. *Voice breaks* I tried to wish you well with my last breath, so you would not mourn me, but I cursed you instead. I left you this legacy of many splitting broken lives, and none of them remembered. And I can’t find a way to save you…I can’t. Fuck.”_

_*Silence. Long exhale*_

_“This is not like me. You are better than this. Come on, Vigo. Think. *Almost whispered* You have thought before, you stupid bastard, come on. Find anything, please. I can’t give up. I won’t. I won’t give up on him, and I won’t give it the satisfaction. The bastard will have to kill me for good if it wants me to give in.”_

_*Sniff. Long silence*_

_*More composed* “I do not know that I can help you, Philip. I don’t. I cannot control what any others do. But I can do what you would want.” *Composure lost, whispered* “I can. …I can rob you, and let him know. I am sorry, Kjære, that my way to help you even is so unfair. But you would want this. And our Venn needs it. So you would want it badly, and I know you would ask me too, if you still could. *Struggling* I am sorry, that of the two of us, I am the one who remembers. Not the one he loved too. I am sorry. You do so much, and ask for so little, and still neither I nor the world can give it to you. But we will see. Who knows. Maybe it will be enough for you to get to meet him again. He’s a surprising boy. I would give him good odds. Not as good as I think you would, but I would still bet on him. We can at least see. I am sorry this is the best I can do.”_

_*Recording Clicks Off*_

* * *

Philip Ojomo. Entry 15,114.

I do not know how to write this.

But I should. I need to put it on paper, in case something happens to me, as I am beginning to be very afraid it will. Perhaps that is stupid. It must be. How could anyone ever get to my Autohaven to know? But all the same, I have a feeling that if I simply vanished, Ollie would find a way. I think he would come in, wondering where I have gone, because if I am gone, there is no threat in here anymore to be afraid of if he steps over the line, and I want him to be able to understand what happened to me if tomorrow does not go well. And if he does not, I want to go out believing that someone will. That someone at least could. That I was inarguably a monster, and very bad, but I was not what I seemed. I wasn’t. I would never have been.

Gods, I am wishing every moment with every fiber of my being that I will be wrong, but I am afraid. I am more afraid than I have been in years. I think since I was a little boy. Gods, I. I cannot even think about what it will mean for me if I am correct. I can’t. There is no room for that yet. I realize this is the thought of a fucking coward, and I wish I could it and claim myself a better man, but a part of me is relieved at the thought that if I _am_ correct, I will certainly die before I am forced to face what this makes me.

And that so much better. It truly is. I do not know how I will be able to face it, and so I am afraid, and I am glad at the thought of dying as much as it terrifies me, because what comes after has surely lost for me forever any chance of being something good.

I should finish what I intended, so I can spend my little remaining time finding how to prepare.

When this began, I thought Ollie was trying to use me. He approached me apologizing for an event I could not remember well, and I thought he was doing it to save his own skin. To try to use my weakness against me, to pry sympathy from me to save himself. I thought he was a horrible man who had committed many acts of unspeakable violence against others, and deserved to be here, suffering at my hand. Like I was told. I thought he only appeared as a young boy, and must be depraved indeed to have his most ideal form his entire life to appear in in this place be a half-deaf young man that chooses to be consistently drunk out of his head, stumbling around through life as if being 1/3 awake and 1/3 able to remember it truly counts as living. And then I began to believe that maybe that could not make sense. That if his most ideal self was this miserable, it must mean he had lived a life so horrifyingly devoid of happiness it could not help but be pitiable, even for a monster. And so I did. I felt bad for him, like a fool.

But he kept helping me. Kept coming to see me, even when I chased him down in trials and made him pay. Gods, have I always been this cruel? Did it truly look so…normal? to me? How can a person be as blind as I have been. It is ironic the Entity has begun to take my hearing. It would have been much more poetic to take my eyes instead. Perhaps the deafness is fitting in its own way…it is all that their cries have ever fallen on.

And this boy. Somehow, my staying my hand _once_ made such an impression on him, he came back. Again, and again, to apologize. For my damaged ear, promising he did not deserve to be saved at the cost of pain for another. I think perhaps that is why it took me so long. I could not fathom so much compassion from a victim.

I could not be more sorry. I don’t. I have no way to repay any of this. No way to seek redemption, or atonement. I can’t. I can only be sorry, and do the one thing that must be done.

I was too fool to see the truth, or to even be suspicious yet, so I simply thought maybe he was a cruel man who had suffered so much in this place, it had changed him a little. Sometimes that can happen. Sometimes people can be sorry and change. I thought he felt bad for me because we shared a partial deafness perhaps, and it made me want to find anything good in him. Or maybe it was just the fact that he came back. Kept coming back. I cannot remember the last time a human spoke to me, except to call me terrible names I only now find I truly deserved, or to beg for their life. I have been very alone. And a human came to see me, of their own will, and they seemed to want to.

Perhaps I…perhaps it was selfishly motivated, even this one good thing I have done. Perhaps I did not see something in him I wanted to save. I may have just wanted a friend.

I hope not. I wish I could have this one thing as some small comfort amidst the violent sea I find myself in now. Like a lighthouse I cannot reach, but was at least there to witness I was trying enough to see it before I was lost.

At least, even if I started to hope there was something to him because I have been so alone, I can say truly that I cared for him by the end of it. I do now, and I will tomorrow when I face my death. I don’t think I meant to. For a long time, I thought it was wrong, because he was a monster, but I did, and I did even before I became suspicious he might not be what I thought. I listened to my gut, like always, but like always, just a few long years too late.

He was so miserable, all the time, even when I decided to take it easier on him again, I felt bad. I know an addict when I see one, and I know how miserable that is. How impossible it feels at the bottom of that incline to ever break yourself from the thing you are joined to. But he was killing himself with alcohol, and ruining what little chance for any positive moments in a life here he could have had, and wearing thin the patience of his companions who even I have seen try and fail to help him. And I was sorry, because he kept coming, so miserable he numbed every step of his life, to try to make mine less miserable. So I thought, ‘There’s something worth saving in him, and I should try.’ And I did. I had no idea how for so long, because we are not allow to speak to them, and I felt guilty helping a person like him at all, but he kept coming, and it was the most kindness someone had shown me in years, and I couldn’t take it, so I finally thought of the one thing I might be able to do. I couldn’t talk, which is what you really need when someone is addicted. You need to talk to them about why, you need to find it and help them, and they need support, but I could not be support or an ear to hear, or even a comforting presence, so the only thing I could think of was a little underhanded, but I hoped it could still be good. If I couldn’t talk, maybe I could suggest, subliminally. Give him a nudge, just a little, in the right direction. So, I began giving his friends and him easier trials any time he was not drunk when I saw him, and giving them easier trials while running him hard and sacrificing him when he was. I did not want his friends to resent his condition, so I was always easy on them in a trial he was in. I only changed how I went against him himself. And I was a little nervous he might catch on, but I tried not to be see-through. I wanted him to find the suggestion on his own—I wanted him to pick the motivation. I wanted him to take those easy trials, and realize it would be so much better without making himself miserable and sick, and to begin to want them. I wanted to make it worthwhile, and be able to reward him in the only way I could, and I did. I tried to make sure the others would appreciate his work too, and give him support, since I could not.

I have worked very hard, every trial, to find the best ways to try to encourage the choice, and it has worked. It began to a little almost immediately. He began to almost never drink, and to be happy, not afraid, when he came by to offer me a little advice before vanishing. I never spoke to him. I never have. I wish that I had. I _wish_ that I had. But I cannot wait. If I try to put off tomorrow morning and speak to him first, I have a feeling that it will come to me. I have a feeling it knows, and it is just waiting, because it is not afraid of anything I can do, and it is enjoying the sight. I cannot wait, and go to him, because if it comes for me and comes at the wrong time, I don’t know what could happen. I cannot get him killed.

So it will just have to be another regret. What is one more for the pyre, but an unbearable new weight.

I never spoke to him. But I was glad to see him. And it started somewhere along the line, to feel wrong.

I would see them occasionally happy together, the way I did a few of my trials. Relieved, proud. I saw them be good to him, especially on days he was drunk and I was after him, and he needed it. I saw him be happier when he spoke to me, and more at ease, and…I _think_ I saw him start to like me. It makes me so broken to think that now. After all the unspeakable things I have done. How could anyone who had suffered like that at my hands ever care at all for me? It is so much undeserved kindness that it is painful to even try to bear.

There is no arguing that I am not a fool, and very blind, to have missed so much for so long, but I am not an idiot. It began to feel wrong. More and more each day. And I have looked through my memories, and my journals, and I have really, _really_ taken a good, hard look at the things I have done and the faces and voices and words of the people I have done them to, and I have found an answer that terrifies me more than Azarov’s voice telling me the cars had all been carrying a body did echoing through my skull.

It is not possible, I am so close to sure now, that the Iska has told me the truth. That the Iska _is_ an Iska at all. It’s some kind of Alledjenu, and I am the man stupid and desperate and blind enough to have let it take me.

And there is no way out.

I am sorry. I would have liked to live long enough to try.

I know it must be impossible to dig myself back from the hole I have made stacking human corpses around me, but I would have liked to try to be closer to the top again by the time I passed on. To have maybe been near enough to top to see a little bit of sky.

But it cannot be true. It can’t. I don’t understand how nothing ever made me see it before. There must be some fundament flaw deep in my being that makes it so easy for me to cost other people their lives without ever meaning to. Since I was a boy, all I have wanted was to be left alone to live with the people I cared about. I wanted for the people who seek senseless killings to be punished for their acts. I could not fathom why a human being would ever take them. And ever since I was a boy, instead I have wracked up bodies I never meant to let be lost, and failed utterly to both do not harm and take none. It must be something very wrong in me, in my soul, to have happened so, so many times now. I do not think I will ever again stand beside someone I have cost their life and be told I am forgiven, and I could not bear it if I was. Once was once too many. I wish I could be un-made, and let the people who have suffered and died because of me come back in my place, but I can’t. I have no power. I have never had any power, except to make grave mistakes, and so that is all I have ever done.

But there is one thing I can do now. Only one, but I will do it.

I will confront the Entity. In a few hours now. It is waiting, and I think I will be able to tell when my time is nearly up, and I will wait for that. I will give myself a few more hours. To think, and to feel regret, because surely I owe at least that to all the people I have tortured here for years, if I can not live long enough to repay them with more.

And then I will face it, and I will level my accusations, and I do not think there will be an after to worry about. I will fight it, of course. But I do not think a man has great odds against a demon of this kind. A demon that could make a whole world. You never know. Perhaps I will at least be able to cause it some pain before it takes me. I would like very much to do that. Whatever sins I have committed are my own, but its guilt is much heavier than mine, and I despair for the things it has gotten me to do. I would so gladly face my end if I knew I could just take it with me. I want to kill it. I want to fucking kill it, and it is so unbearable to feel this much fury and hatred and know that I likely will be lucky if I am able to scratch it at all. But I must try. So I will, and maybe if I cannot find any amount of atonement, I will at least achieve honor in the means of my death. I will not be allowed to join my family, but maybe I will be able to see them sometimes, in the distance. At this point that would be so much I think I would weep with gratitude for it.

I pray for it.

I have been so alone for years, and I deserve it, but to be alone forever in the next life is so hard to bear. I always thought no matter how awful life became, I could see them again someday, and that has made all the suffering worth it, because I love them enough to make any suffering worth it. And now I am so afraid I have lost even that. That I will have lived through all of this for no reason at all.

I am so afraid to die.

But I have to do this. It is the only thing I can do, and I am not such a coward I will not do even that for the people I have so utterly wronged.

I wish I could truly save them. I wish I could explain. I hope Ollie finds at least some of this someday and understands. He may hate me more, knowing me for real through this, but at least he would know I cared, and that I am truly sorry.

I suppose at least knowing you are going to face your death gives you some time to pray. Maybe there will be something listening that will take pity on me, and someday I will get to see the people I loved again, even at a distance. It is…possible. Maybe there is a chance for that. Likely not, but I can pray.

There is nothing else to write here, except, I suppose, in case Ollie is the one who finds this someday if anyone does, “Goodbye.” I do not know what I was to you, but to me you were the first friend I had in a long time. And one of the kindest people I have ever met. I pray you find a way out of here someday, and a way to be happy. I pray that if it is possible, I see you at least once in the afterlife, a long time from now, to say all of this myself. My friend.

-Philip Ojomo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Research notes: No kind of hearing loss is fun, but they don’t all effect you the same. While it might sound better than just getting your hearing damaged to be up and running with one working ear, a lot of people consider poor hearing in general easier to deal with than complete loss in one ear, because it does so much to destroy your sense of direction when it comes to sound, and often makes it so you won’t hear high frequency sounds (IE a hard ‘s’ like in ‘someone’, or a whistle, chirping) from the side you no longer have a working ear on at all. It also makes it harder for your brain to focus on specific sounds and filter others out, or tell how loud things are, because it’s suddenly working with only half the resources it is supposed to be able to do that with. Hearing loss period is distressing for a lot of the easy to imagine reasons—general fear at losing a sense and dread at not knowing how much worse it will get, loss of formerly loved and enjoyed comfort things like music, increased difficulty and danger in daily life tasks, etc. But it also just gets super fucking emotionally draining to consistently have to do things like ask people to repeat themselves a 6th time, and really wanting to know what they said, but embarrassed you keep missing it, and aware they’re getting frustrated with you. Dealing with people just saying ‘never mind’ and losing forever little conversations you should have had can take a sincere toll. And it can be stressful to have conversations and worry about if you mishear or miss things period, or are talking too quietly or too loud. And while those might sound like minor annoyances, they are not, and the more they stack, the more distressing they are to deal with. It can make basic social interaction a source of dread. Which is why it’s really important to have good friends who make you feel included and important and understood, and why Ollie has some fairly understandable mixed feelings and almost even a very slight dependence on being in the realm, since for all it has taken from him, it forced people to view him as necessary and valuable, and it gave him back a large chunk of his hearing. Which I am sure is a miserable thing to have any kind of mixed feelings on at all, and is a huge source of guilt for him. The Entity is truly skilled at, and loves, being cruel.  
> There’s a little bit or Norwegian in there, since that’s Vigo’s primary language. Norwegian is not a very emotional language period, but unfortunately for /it/, Vigo is a very affectionate person, so I’m sure he used to make people wildly uncomfortable back home. The things he calls Philip, Elskede and Kjære, mean essentially “Beloved” and “Dear” respectively. The former is a very intense term and not used much, and Kjære is a much more likely term for your s/o. Ollie is called some form of Gutt/Gutten min and Venn/Vennen min in this chapter, both of which terms of endearment for a son, and escalate in intensity from “My boy” to “My friend”  
> In addition to the Norwegian, Vigo also speaks a little bit of Southern Sami in this chapter, most of which is lost in the recording, but his decipherable "Manne…….…gåffoeh…….jamme…… goegkedh…” is something along the “I...stupid...death...tired” and was definitely him going off about not being able to deal with Ollie being a dumbass who’s going to get himself killed and be the death of him, which is exhausting him with stress worrying about it. Which, considering, …fair.  
> I've decided to name all the chapters after a Southern Sámi word, because it's cool and also because I'd like to learn more of them myself, and because it seems very fitting. Vigo is a connoisseur of language and words in general, and he likes to record them in meaningful ways. Haerhpie means 'Pain'.  
> Ollie Daley is an Original Character of a friend’s. He’s from the early 2000s, California. Was a teen during the big recession. And has terribly destructive ‘coping’ mechanisms that were actually /way/ worse before going into the fog. There were a /lot/ of drug addictions to go with the alcohol, so in some ways, while it was absolutely /miserable/ cold-turkey withdrawal, being in the fog minorly helped him. Not enough to like, balance out the immense personal permanent trauma and suffering from being murdered over a thousand times. But very very frail and thin silver lining there. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you're enjoying it (especially Speck, for whom it was written, although I know this is your second time now going through it. So I guess I hope you like it even more the second time through?). Deeply appreciate the comments and kudos. The rest will be up pretty shortly too. : )


	3. Målsodh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ollie deals with the fallout of his relationship with Philip, and struggles with some tough choices.

It had been I think about a week.

It felt like a month, but it can’t have been. There weren’t that many trials in it.

I kind of think the worst part is, if I’d been a day earlier, or he’d been just even one day later, I could have given him stuff to fix up his ear.

So.

That can’t actually _possibly_ be the worst part, though. It’s not, and I know. It’s just the worst part that could have been different.

It was about a week though. Before anything happened at all.

That first day, when I went to go talk to him like I always did, he just wasn’t there. There was nobody. And I thought…’Fuck. Must have been exactly when he got a trial.” So I waited. For like, two hours, but that’s longer than trials go—longer than Wraith trials _ever_ go. So I knew it couldn’t be that. I thought…maybe he’s asleep, you know? Maybe he’s asleep, or something. Because I tended to go around the same time every day, so it was weird for him not to be there, but, that could happen. And I went home eventually and gave up. Didn’t see him the next day either. I called for him that day, but nothing happened. I even got up the nerve to do it more than once, and pretty loud. But nothing. Didn’t even show up to tell me to go.

Third day, I hadn’t gone to check yet when I saw him in a trial. First one of the day.

I was actually really relieved, I think, more than anything else. I was relieved as shit, because I mean, I don’t know if anything very permanent ever _happens_ to the killers, but it _could_ , and it had been more than 48 hours since _anybody_ had gotten a trial with him or seen him in Autohaven at all—even Meg, on one of her runs. I figured it’d be like always, but it wasn’t. And I wasn’t drunk.

I wasn’t.

But he came after me the second he saw me, and not like before. Not even like when he chases me really hard sometimes. That’s more like…someone being kind of pissed at you, or a competition maybe. This was like before, this was like every other killer ever. This was hunting. It wasn’t personal. Fuck, you know, that used to make him one of my favorite killers, right? It’s why most of us prefer him so much. Because it’s not personal.

Who knew that fucking ‘not personal’ could go so far the other way like a slap to the face, but fuck. It was like I’d been…I guess it was stupid to ever call us friends, never even having a real conversation, but…Been something. For two months. And then suddenly, a switch got flipped, and he doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore. Or. Something else mattered more, like it always does eventually. And I got passed over and forgotten.

It’s so fucking weird, when you’re so scared of something happening and so sure it will, and then it does? Because you tell yourself you’re all fucking prepared for it and shit, but you’re not. You never are. That’s why you’re scared of it. Knowing a train’s coming isn’t gonna do shit to lessen the impact. Maybe it even hurts more, because you were scared listening for it all that time, when you could have just been blindsided.

I don’t think. I should have, but I honestly don’t think I really thought it’d happen this time.

I mean, why the fuck did he ever like me at all? Or tolerate me, or whatever it was. So why would that change? But of course it did.

And. I mean, I tried. I went and talked to him once, right after that first trial, and he raised his sickle at me the second he saw me and made that kind of growling sound in his throat I don’t know how he makes, and it scared me, and it’s never scared me before, so I backed off.

I went again the next day, and he wasn’t out, and I tried calling, and when he came, he was angry, and I ran away before he could get close, because I knew he was just going to scare me off again. I came back that night, and he was out, and I tried to apologize.

I don’t even know for what, because I didn’t know what I did, but anything I could think of. Whatever had made him mad. Whatever had suddenly made him hate me.

But that made him mad too. And he came up all the way to the edge of the barrier like he never has before, and slammed his weapon into it, like he was trying to break through security glass to gut me. Like a…fucking feral animal at a zoo or something. And I don’t understand. I didn’t understand. Because he wasn’t like that. He’s _never_ been like that, even in trials. He’s never scared me before. But he did them, and so I ran off again, and this time I didn’t go back. Because. He’d made it pretty clear how he felt, and that it was ‘fuck you, don’t come back,’ and I didn’t want him to start tunneling me again. I already have enough killers who hate me…

I tried to drink some of that off, but I was low, because I hadn’t been restocking for a while, so I tried to burn for Glenvale like I used to to get more, but it had been a while, and I was a little out of practice, and I died four times before I made it out with any, and everybody was pissed with me because I was desperate to get it, I fucked up on doing gens fast enough, and I feel bad, because I know I shouldn’t have done that. I knew I shouldn’t when I was doing it, the whole time, like a fucking ticking clock in my head. But I did it anyway, because it’s what I do, and they were pissed, because it was shitty, but at least I got some whisky again.

And it helped. So. That was something. I guess.

Some of them aren’t mad, I guess. Claudette keeps coming over to talk to me. She didn’t even hang out with me that much before, because she most kind of gardens alone and hangs out with the whole group or whoever follows her to try and engage, but like, one-on-one the past couple weeks she started talking to me more. I know she’s worried, and usually that pisses me off, because like, okay, sure, it’s fucked, but so is _everything,_ and I’m _not_ that big a deal. I can handle it, and it’d be easier to handle if people quit making such a fucking big deal.

Plus, uh. I don’t think anybody really even had an idea what was going on. They all just know he’s been acting different in trials. And like, a lot.

But I guess my poker face is shit. Right now—usually it’s not. Usually I think I’m pretty good. But anyway, usually it’s annoying, but Claudette kind of just isn’t. She’s was too like, genuine and meek about it to feel like she’s pitying you, just worried, and I like that. It doesn’t help much though, but that’s not her fault. It’s just, like, not much anybody could do for this. And she doesn’t know much about this anyway, and I wasn’t telling her anything.

Then, maybe a week after the Wraith suddenly quit pretending to give a shit, it was weird. There was this one trial where he saw me, and went after somebody else. I dunno why. I was a lot closer, and we were both on gens, and mine was at _least_ as far along as his was, but he went after Ace instead of me. And I was hoping maybe just…something happened, you know? Like he got in trouble, and had to act maybe, or whatever I did that pissed him off, he’d gotten over it, or changed his mind, but uh, I’m not that desperate or that stupid, so I killed that pretty quick.

He kept…being fucking weird, though. Not like before, though, like _way_ before—like before the time he got his ear fucked up in the first place. There was a little while before that where he just kind of quit going so hard after me in trials, and went for other people a lot. It was weird. It was like going back in time a couple of months, except instead of kind of being a step up, it just made me feel sick.

I think it was like, maybe six trials into that, Claudette escaped with me, and she asked me what was wrong. We were standing in an exit, because Kate wasn’t dead yet, and we were sticking around to help her if we could if she got caught. And I don’t know why, but I told her—a little bit. Maybe I was just…like… _outstandingly_ drunk that day. So. Anyway, she asked, and I said something like, “Wraith is acting like it’s fucking six months ago all of a sudden, like he thinks he can trick us into thinking he’ll go back to being easy again or something.”

And she said that wouldn’t make sense. That she’d kind of noticed something weird was going on too, but it didn’t make any kind of sense at all for the Wraith to think we’d just believe it if it toyed with us, and he’d never seemed like the kind to toy with us before, and she’d been here for so long before me, and he never had, and if he was that kind of person, he wouldn’t have only started it just now, so something else had to be going on.

And like…I _wanted_ to believe that, man. I fucking did, _so_ much. But like. I can’t. I couldn’t. I know what goes with believing that, and it’s ending up where I was a few weeks ago all over again. So fuck, I wasn’t about to. But. She kept saying that kind of thing, off and on, if she could tell I was thinking about it, I guess. Maybe just if she thought I looked sad, which I swear to God I haven’t been doing—I don’t know how she can tell. Maybe that fucking—whatever—her ability that lets her see injuries and shit, maybe it lets her read moods too or something. But I didn’t agree, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. It just kept rattling around in there, and making me kind of _more_ fucking miserable, and then.

Then I got this.

This…fucking book.

Jesus Christ.

I don’t even know what to say.

It was just a normal day. It was any other trial. We were vs Deathslinger, and doing really good, so I was about to go digging in a chest, hoping for a toolbox or something, but I started thinking about what she’d said while I was picking the lock. And I was just…I was wondering, so hard, what the fuck _did_ happen. I knew _something_ did. And it must have been bad, for him to turn around and hate me so completely, right? Because we.

…I don’t know what we were. We were almost a little bit like friends.

I thought so, anyway.

And anyway, I pop the chest open, and there’s this…book. Just. Sitting there, on top. Not even under all the weird useless shit there usually is inside a chest or the dirt and dust. Just right on top, like a wrapped gift. So I pick it up, shove it in a pocket. Claudette collects that shit, right? Because it’s from past survivors and sometimes it’s got useful tips and shit. Anyway, I still don’t make it. We were doing great, but fucking Deathslinger gets me right near the end when gates are up, and I’m sacrificed, but a few minutes later, Jeff appears back at the fire—he escaped—and he’s got the book. He comes up to me and hands it over, says, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you in time. I was across the trial area when you went down. Found this by the hook though and saved it for you.” And like, it’s Jeff—I know he’d never let me die on purpose—I really like that guy. It’s just kind of weird he saved the book at all, because gates were up and he should have been escaping and also, it’s dark brown—how the fuck did he even see it in _Glenvale_ of all places; what possessed him to walk over and check? But I take it. I’d kind of forgotten about it by then, but sure, it’s a find. And I’m kind of planning to just give it to Claudette, because I don’t use that shit much—she and Jane and Adam and Dwight do—but I don’t know. There’s just a number on it—4. No name or anything. So I’m a little bit curious.

And it’s weird. I go off, I find a tree at the edge of the clearing, and I slide down and just open it to the middle to see, and start flipping through.

…I think. I think it took me a minute. I wasn’t really paying that much attention, if I’m honest. And I think it took me maybe…four entries? Before I even realized something was really up. I was skimming words. But I stop. I re-read the line I saw, and I fucking pick that journal up and go off _way_ into the woods, find a new tree, and I sit down, and I just…fucking read.

I read for hours. I wanted to run to the end, but, where I was in the middle, he was talking about me, so I didn’t. I wanted to see all of it. To understand how it got to the end. Step by step.

Fuck.

I don’t know how it exists. I don’t know how I _got_ this. I can’t have been meant to. There’s no _way_ the Entity would want me to see this shit. But I did. I did. It took me four pages, because I didn’t know his name, I didn’t even think of him as having a name, because I’m fucking stupid and an asshole fuckwad, but of course he does, and it’s Philip Ojomo. I don’t even fucking know how to pronounce that. Fuck. Fuck me, I couldn’t even call him by his name because I don’t know how to do shit. Fuck!

Fuck. Fuck, and it gets worse.

I guess survivors aren’t the only ones who can’t help but journal, huh? I guess it’s all of us.

He’s got so many entries. A lot are just…mundane. Sometimes he wonders about life here, or thinks about before. But a lot of the time he just talks about what happened in the day. And God, it’s so _fucking_ like what we do. It makes me sick reading it. It’s so fucking normal, it hurts.

But whatever’s going on with him? It’s…It’s not like what we thought at all.

There’s a lot he doesn’t really say, because I guess he’s just writing to himself and he already knows all his context, but as far as I can tell, the way the Wraith understands the realm, is that we’re all evil people who are dead, and he’s some kind of warden almost, whose job it is to punish us for what we did in life. I’ve got no fucking clue _why_ he started believing that in the first place, but he super does. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know _shit_ about who we are, or what’s going on. I-I think _I_ fucking know more than he does, and I’m new, and I don’t fucking listen very well or get the meta quantum physis shit at all! Which is _so_ fucked up.

The page I opened to was about me too. I didn’t notice for four pages, but I flipped to just before the middle, because the book opened naturally there. I almost think it was by design. That whoever… _what_ ever…wanted me to have this? That it did that on purpose. So I got back to the start of that. And I just read it. Entry by entry.

It was kind of fucking brutal man, if I’m honest. That guy hated my _guts._ Like, he wanted to kick me to death probably. _Really_ thought I was shit. Because I’m drunk so much and a half-deaf disaster he thinks, which is super fun to read even if I mean—he’s not exactly wrong, but still kind of fuck you.

But then…like. I’m reading him talking about how I went to go see him for the first time after he hurt his ear, and apparently, he’s got no fucking idea what I’m talking about (and I didn’t understand that when I read this part, but I do now, but anyway he really genuinely didn’t). He thinks I’m trying to manipulate him into fucking up and letting me go or something—which I am not shitty enough to do! Like, I wouldn’t.

But then he starts thinking maybe I feel bad, because we both have fucked up ears. And he starts thinking maybe the reason I drink is because my life was shit and I was never happy, which was kind of funny to read, because his reasoning was _all kinds of wrong,_ since he thinks I’m some like, evil dead businessman in my 80s who just _looks_ 20-something, but it’s like when you fuck up a math problem four times and somehow the fuck ups cancel each other out and you still get the right answer. Because I guess that is…

I don’t know.

But anyway. He feels kind of bad for me. I don’t know…It’s weird to read that, you know?

Like, should I be offended? Should it be sweet that some fucking killer dude who thinks I’m evil somehow still finds me sympathetic? I don’t know! I’ve got no fucking clue! So I didn’t decide; I just kept reading.

And it goes on and on, his journal. It’s…it’s months. Months of his half of a relationship I wasn’t really sure anybody but me was having at all. And he starts to like me.

Of all the things. He convinces himself I’m changing, and maybe I regret whatever it is I did, because I keep trying to be nice to him, and he decides he likes that enough to want to _help_ me. And he does.

Fuck.

The really sad things is, I was too stupid to get he was doing this at all. He fucking thought maybe if he gave me really shit trials when I was drunk, and really good ones when I was sober, it’d subliminally get me to quit fucking drinking so much, and it _did—_ like a fucking Pavlov’s dog or some shit. He god damn freshman psych’d me, and I fell for that shit.

He really did that.

He spent _months, **months**_ working on this complex little idea of finding a way to help me like he was. And then he really did it. He really did.

God. There’s so many entries about me. He spent all his free time trying to find ways to help me, and he barely even knew me. Just because I went and talked to him, and I looked sad, and took trials drunk.

fuck.

So I get to the end.

And Philip. He starts to look forward to seeing me more. He says it’s the closest he’s been to having human contact like a friend in years, and he thinks it’s stupid, but it means a lot to him. I didn’t know that. I never would have known that.

It’s so much like the shit I thought.

And he starts to get…suspicious. That the Entity, that it lied to him, about what we are, because of me.

And the last entry.

He wrote it for me.

I think maybe. That’s why I got it. Maybe somehow, he sent it. I don’t know. I don’t know how this works, but he wrote it to me. And about me. And about him. And it is so fucking chock full of regret and sorrow and agony, I could barely get through it. He hates himself _so much,_ because what? Because he didn’t know? Fuck. And he realizes, he’s so close to sure, that the Entity lied. It’s been using him. To hurt us. That he’s been killing people—innocent people, and tormenting them for _years._ So I read him fall apart. I read him talk about how sorry he is, and how he wishes he had never been born at all so he could have not done this. How he thinks he’ll never see his family in the afterlife, because he won’t go to same place. How he wishes he would, so he could apologize to me someday when I get there too. And how he is going to confront the Entity, and try to fight it for us, because he has to, but he knows he’s doomed to fail. He knows he’s gonna die. He thinks he’s gonna die tomorrow, and for nothing, and he’s just so fucking miserable, and sad, and lonely.

I think it’s the worst thing I’ve _ever_ had to read. Fuck.

I spent. _So_ long wondering what happened, and being mad, at him, and at me, and wanting to know, and not wanting to know, and I know now. I know why he didn’t come back.

He didn’t come back because it killed him.

…I don’t know what else to say.

There was so much despair and self-loathing in that one journal page, I think I’d die if I ever felt that bad even for a second. Jesus Christ. And it killed him. And I never got a chance. To tell him he was wrong. To tell him it was okay. He just went out like that.

He was scared to die.

He was scared.

Fuck.

Fuck, I have cried so many times since I got here, because this place is a living hell, but it’s always been the pain. I can’t remember the last time I cried because I was just sad. But I can’t fucking stop now. And I can’t talk to anybody!

Because they’d hate me. They’d fucking hate me for the shit I did, and the shit I didn’t tell them about, and, and mostly for the stuff I’m gonna do now.

Fuck. fuck.

He called me his friend. He said he was sorry. He wanted to tell me he was sorry, and that he cared about me. And he signed it, “My friend.”

How the fuck I am supposed to be okay with that?

How the fuck am I supposed to ever be okay again.

I never got to call him anything. I don’t think I ever even fucking called him “Wraith.”

Shit! Fuck. Fuck me. fuck.

I don’t know exactly what he was gonna do, or what the Entity did, but I know what it cost him. Because I read back, and there’s entries missing. Pages gone. Somebody took them. This isn’t the first time. I know why he didn’t remember me saving me, and thought I was a liar—it’s because he’s forgot me twice now. I know what it took.

I have been so angry, and so hurt, because I thought I got abandoned.

But I didn’t.

My friend fucking died. My first. _Fuck._

Fuck. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.

And I don’t know to _do—_ I have no clue. I haven’t ever had to make this kind of decision before, but I’m doing it now, and it’s bad. It’s so much. Because it’s not gonna stop, see? I don’t even know how many times it’s already happened. He’s trapped. Unless something changes, he’ll die like this every time he starts to get anywhere close to who he wants to be, because he’s not in complete control of himself anymore and he can’t free—there’s something more powerful that’s got its hooks in him. He can’t break it. He can’t just get better. Because every time he does, that fucking thing is going to erase it all for him, and he’s back to square one.

And I know it’s already started. Looking it at it like this, it makes total sense how he’s been. He’s back to…page 40 Philip or something, and he’s starting to feel a little bad for me again, like a broken record, and it’s all gonna happen again if I let it.

But if I don’t.

He’s gonna be alone.

So that’s fucking it. I can live through the past couple months again, and I can get him back, and we’ll both have a friend for a little bit, and be happier, like he is right before the end, and then he’ll die, and we’ll go back to nothing and have to do it again, or I’m the one who drops him, and I back off, and he stays alone out here.

And God help me, I’m gonna do it again.

I don’t even know if that’s better, or it’s worse, and I’m being selfish, because I want the good months, and I’m not the one really getting fucked when the movie ends, but I can’t just let him be dead. I can’t. I can’t…i can’t.

So fuck.

Fuck, tomorrow morning I’m gonna walk to Autohaven, and I’m gonna say, “Hey. I’m really sorry I.”—fuck. “I’m really sorry your ear got hurt for me. Nobody should get hurt for me.” And then I’m gonna hurt him. I’m gonna fucking hurt him in a way that doesn’t hit for a couple months, and then I’m gonna get him killed. And I’m gonna spend all the days between trying to help him get used to no sound in one ear again, and making the time so livable I can pretend it’s gonna be worth it for him to get hurt and lose two more months of memory for okay times he’s forced to forget.

Because fuck. Somehow the alternative is even worse.

I think it is. Fuck. I fucking think it is.

But I don’t know. And I can’t tell anybody, because they’re gonna know it’s not. They’re gonna know it’s not, and they’ll make me stop, and let it go. Or they’ll blame for when the easier trials go away. So I won’t.

I’ll just go. And I’ll. I’ll fucking try to think of something to do that’s better, but I don’t know what that is.

Fuck.

I don’t know why I’m saying any of this. I don’t know who I’m talking to. Just the last couple days. Weeks maybe. I feel listened to. And I have nobody I _can_ to anymore, so maybe it’s okay to pretend that’s a real thing.

I’m glad.

Is that fucked up?

I can’t even tell anymore. I can’t.

But I’m glad I found this stupid awful fucking journal.

Because at least I know. I know him a little better, and I really like him. And I feel like somebody should know that, right? Even if that’s the one fucking good thing I can do, out of all this, I know that. And I’m not gonna forget.

It’s pathetic comfort.

I’m some kind of friend.

Who fucking needs enemies, right?

But for what it’s worth, Philip. I’m sorry too. I’m so fucking sorry. And I’m so, so fucking sorry for what I’m gonna do to you, but I don’t know anything better to do. And you were my friend too. You still are. Even if that’ll only ever really be real for a day at a time. I liked you. I missed you.

I wish you’d gotten attached to somebody better.

But fuck it, I’m gonna be your friend again, if I have to live on repeat too. I can do that anyway. I’m pretty useless, and pretty selfish, and pretty stupid and mediocre at best except that I’m kinda funny. But I can do that. I can come back. I can come back and…fucking ram my head against a wall till it kills me. I’m not gonna be the one to ditch somebody I loved once it gets inconvenient.

So I’ll see you in the morning. My friend.

* * *

I never write. I mean. I have this damn book. But I never used it before. Except for ticket stubs and shit. I guess if I actually did write in it, I’d run outta space pretty fuckin quick. It’s not a big little pocket book.

Anyway. I guess I am now.

Fuck. I can’t believe I’ve made fun of the others for so god damn long for all journaling all the shit time, and now I’m doing it a little too, but there’s just fucking no one to talk to! And if I keep talking to myself, eventually Meg Thomas is gonna trip over me on a run and ask who the fuck Philip is and why I’m talking about him!! So. This is better. And if I just keep the shittyass little thing on me all the time, nobody’ll get the chance to read it. So. That’ll work.

Besides, it’s not like I’m gonna use it much. I just. I fucking had to vent, and I got nobody to vent to.

It’s been a while.

Since…Philip. Since I got that journal, and decided to try again. And honestly? It’s been okay for a while. I mean, it’s fucking exhausting and kinda feels like shit to do all the stuff I did before for a second time, and it was really not fun when he hated me, but now it’s okay again as far as he’s concerned, so that’s good. Or. It was. And…it was kind of nice, too. In a fucked up way. Sometimes I’d see like, the exact same good reaction I got before, and it was kind of familiar, and nice. Like…like having an old friend remember something they’d forgotten, or—or maybe more like re-playing a videogame you loved, and getting to a great part again, and watching an NPC say something really great to your character. I dunno. It was nice, though. Because he liked me again this time, and I think I was actually able to help him a lot! Which. Is weird. Since…I am helping him get better at hunting us…

But he’s doing the thing he did before again now, where he hunts me really hard if I’m drunk, and goes super easy if I’m not, and now that I know he’s doing it, it’s actually kinda funny? Shit, I still can’t believe he fuckin’ classic conditioned me last time and I didn’t even fucking get suspicious! Thank God he doesn’t know that. Or, wait. I guess he probably thinks that’s what’s happening right now. : / Oh well. At least it’s not, and he doesn’t remember the time it really was. And in some ways, it’s actually kinda nice, you know? To have a tangible reward for.

Wait what the fuck?

Huh. That was weird. I guess this kind of has had me thinking like it’s a problem I need to fix. Is it? I mean…Okay, sure! It gets me in trouble some, and like, Jane gets onto me a lot, and so do some of the others. Dwight tried to have a talk with me about it the other day. But fuck, I mean, we all have bad trials for whatever reason, and it’s not like I’m really an alcoholic. Or like, I mean, whatever if I was a little bit, we all die 24/7 in hell and I’m not a bad one anyway, so it’s not really hurting anything. It helps me get through shit. Really the only big downside is if I’m super drunk, I fuck up in trials, and people get really pissed with me.

But I’m not really like that—it’s not a big deal. I guess though, like, as much as people have been getting on to me, it’s kind of nice to have a good reward when I’m drinking less too, you know—not like, because I need not to be, but because if I don’t, people are less mad, and that’s a plus, and if I get kind of free-ride Philip trials, it helps days be a little better without it.

Whatever the fuck! I’m moving on.

Anyway, he’s doing it again, and the plus side is good trials and everyone is less annoyed with me at the campfire, plus I steal less because I lose my stock slower, so I die less in trials in Glenvale. Minus side is that I feel like every fucking goddamn time I do drink, I get a fucking Wraith trial like, right after—it’s so unfair! And God. When he goes after me. It really put s the fear of God in you to have someone that angry trying to rip all your bones out, I’ll tell you that.

But mostly, it’s been going pretty good. Or. Or it was. But, uh. I left him a gift yesterday, and he had a really weird reaction to it. Not a bad one, but like…like it worried him that I did it. I…I haven’t ever seen him look worried before. So…

So anyway, I haven’t seen him at all today, and I’ve walked over there three times now, and.

Shit. What Am I gonna do if he’s gone again already? It’s only been like, another two months. Is it always gonna be about two months? Can I—can I fucking slow it down somehow? Or is it…am I just gonna be in a fucking time loop forever, where just when he’s almost looking happy to see me sometimes, there’s a day where nobody’s in Autohaven at all, and then two days later he’s back to the big scary thing with glowing eyes that hates me?

…Maybe I’m jumping the gun. I don’t know. But I have a bad feeling. I know it’s jinx to say that, but. Fuck, man. I do. And I got nobody to talk to about it.

God fucking damn it. They’re gonna ask, I know it, and I’m gonna lie, and they’re gonna be annoyed suddenly the Wraith is weird again, and I’m gonna start drinking more to get through that, and they’re gonna get mad I’m drinking more, and then once I make friends again, he’s gonna start _killing_ me more. I’m like a fucking racquetball getting slammed around by a one-man asshole game fucking god’s playing with my shittyass life and I kinda hate it.

Maybe it’s not time yet though. Maybe it’ll like, get easier. If it happens again. And I can keep doing this, right? It was…it was definitely better for a couple weeks.

* * *

Ollie was not wrong.

Except about how easy it was going to be to keep doing this.

It had seemed, originally, like knowing would be half the battle. Like…being aware what was wrong with his friend was going to make it all so manageable, and simple—a system. But it didn’t at all. It just made it…different. It was nice, knowing that he wasn’t just suddenly being turned on, or used. But there was absolutely nothing in his life that had prepared him for how this was going to feel.

No wonder, he thought, people were so terrified of getting Alzheimer’s. He kinda was now too…and it wasn’t even something he’d ever thought about before. But like, shit? You know? What kind of practice _could_ make this a thing you got used to, or were able to handle well?

And he went back to it. Round three. Or—technically four, maybe, if you counted the very first time, before the Wraith had been injured. And he did it from scratch. Tried his best, in the hope that the person who had chosen twice now to be his friend would still find something in him worth reaching out towards, and living in the fear that this time, next time, the time after, eventually there’d be one where he failed that, and it was over. That part? Was miserable.

But he made it. And the middle was good. It was slow, and awkward, and god, it was so much more fucking sad than he expected to walk up to Autohaven and give advice for the third time, and hope he’d figured out a little better how to say it, and watch the same silent response from the Wraith he’d had before. The surprise, the suspicion, and the mistrust. The anger. The hell of the next few trials, while he was convinced Ollie was doing this to manipulate him, and then after the pain of those, the slow change. All the negative emotions just becoming surprise, or confusion, when he walked over. Never a response, not verbally, but after a while, the guy would for a second look almost glad to see him. And this time, Ollie tried to stretch it out, he really did. Because the idea of only a few weeks of having Philip back was making every second awful, just waiting for the hammer to fall. So he progressed slower. Tried to—to not give Philip so many doubts this time. No gifts, just talking to him outside of trials once a day. Moving slower, moving careful.

And fucking still, it only took about eight weeks.

As the survivors figured their days, anyway. As much as they could pretend to be living in time period.

And then one day he was just gone, and gone for another three, and then Ollie saw him in Autohaven, but he was angry to see him again, and there were cuts on him. The fucking worst part was he couldn’t remember if the added punishment were new, or if he’d just been so fucking self-involved last time he hadn’t even noticed.

Fuck.

He wondered what it was like, to get punished by the Entity? To have your ear punctured by one of those claws, to be cur open, the way they were at the end of a trial, but in a way that didn’t go away and drop you back at the campfire? To have it get into your head, and rip out the bits of you it didn’t like. He wondered if that last part hurt, or if it was just awful, and which way would even be worse. Somehow it almost seemed crueler if it could tear out chunks of who you used to be without even letting you feel the pain and injury of losing a part of yourself.

That time, Ollie didn’t go back the first day. He couldn’t. He got overwhelmed by the new cuts, and hid out by the edge of the clearing for a long time, trying feverishly to figure out if what he was doing could be worse—if maybe—maybe even as upset as Philip had been, and as much as he’d written about being glad to meet someone, it was cruel to do what he was doing, and ignorance was bliss, and it would be kinder to just not speak to him ever again. But. But he talked himself down, and went the next morning, and god, it hurt, it was so fucking painful, but in a nice, familiar way. Even the anger was familiar. And he didn’t even really care. He was just glad he was back, and things weren’t so alone anymore.

But. But that was the first day. And it got harder. Got feverish. He got lost again in trying to prolong the inevitable, and failed. And it was round five.

Round six. Round seven.

The others were worried. He was like, vaguely aware of that, sure, but honestly, Ollie had pulled back so much he didn’t notice at all until after the first several rotations. He didn’t really want to be around anybody. Even Kate, and Jeff, who he’d hung out with the most before—not like he didn’t like them, just. There was shit they might ask, and shit he was doing they might judge him for, and he just…he didn’t have the energy to deal with it, you know? It was fine in groups—he was actually way more fun and chill and well-liked in groups now than he had been before all this, and groups protected you from intense personal questions. But one-on-one? God, that was another story. Too much people might say, or ask, and even with him ducking friends, Dwight and Jane _did_ ask him, and that was fine from Jane, because she was fucking terrifying, but also, she _was_ Jane Romero, like holy shit, and of course she was gonna get on everyone’s dick about whatever they were doing that might cause problems. Dwight on the other hand, was driving him crazy. He’d come over the other night, and asked if they could talk alone, and Ollie hadn’t been able to shake him, and it had been so fucking irritating, because when they’d gone outside the little clearing for some privacy, Dwight had been like, “Look. I know something’s going on with you and the Wraith, and it’s clearly been pretty rough on you. You’re all over the place emotionally, and you go from drinking too much, to fine, to not sleeping almost at all, to drinking again, and you’re not even talking to your closest friends much, and I’m _worried._ We’re all just…really worried. I know you’re…kind of a private person, about personal stuff, and you probably don’t want to talk about this, but please. Just. Tell me what’s going on. I want to help— _all_ of us _want_ to help, but we don’t know what’s going on with you. Whatever it is, I’m not gonna judge—I just want to help.” Like he was his fucking dad or something, which was bad enough, and twice as infuriating from a guy almost his own age. So, Ollie had tried not to blow up and only half-succeeded, and basically told him no offense, but it’s none of your fucking business, so back off, and Dwight _had,_ and that was a relief. Although, Ollie was still pretty annoyed. Stuff had mostly gone back to normal on that front.

But.

Not on the Philip front.

It was funny, you know? That he could basically just re-live the same two-ish months over, and over, and over, and over, and feel like he was getting to know the guy better, instead of just re-meeting him for the first time. It was kind of nice, and fun, to know what advice would help him the most with his hearing issues, and what gifts he might actually use. What his tells were, the exact _day_ he’d swapped to trying to help again. But it was also…really fucking heartbreaking. And fucking hard. And he just…

It wasn’t that it was hard. It wasn’t that it hurt to watch his friend die, again and again and again, and come back with more scars, and more wounds. Or the extra pain he suffered in trials the next few days while the Wraith didn’t like him yet, and thought he was trying to manipulate him. It wasn’t that he couldn’t stop it, or save him, or that he was living in a loop where he was always doomed to lose his friend at the end, just when whatever fucked up relationship they had was starting to be real.

It was that…

It was that.

He couldn’t keep pretending it…was not his fault. He’d known. Ollie knew he’d known. Known since day one, that he was responsible. But fuck. _Fuck._

It got so hard to deny it. It got so hard to think ‘I’m going to have to watch him die again,’ and not the truth. Not…’I’m going to kill him again. I’m going to get him killed.’

And fucking God, he’d done that _so. many. times._ now. He pretended he cared about Philip in some kind of real way, that the guy was his friend? But fuck— _fuck,_ he. Philip was right. Old Philip, Philip from the first few pages of that journal. He _was_ just manipulating him for his own benefit. And he knew it. He knew that was it. Because. Because he loved him, and didn’t want to be alone, and so he kept getting to know him. Kept making him live out this farce of a relationship, only to lose all of it, and be forced to suffer. To come back next time with some scar or wound Ollie might as well have given him himself. Like a song on repeat. Ollie kept living in that one good time again and again and again, and he was hurting Philip, and he knew it. He knew it was wrong, it was fucked up. There couldn’t be any way it was worth it. He’d thought originally he was doing this because he loved Philip, and the guy was his friend—he’d called him his friend! And just—just leaving him to live a lie forever, alone, hated, it had been too cruel, and Ollie had thought _he’d_ been willing to suffer on repeat, not to abandon his friend. But fuck, he was getting more and more afraid he’d been lying to himself, and he was a selfish piece of shit who’d just been doing what he wanted and hurting Philip for his own gain and using him like the worthless, spineless, awful, disgusting piece of shit he was. And he…

 _Fuck._ Fuck, he couldn’t do it anymore.

He couldn’t. It was wrong. And he was bad, and he felt awful, and he couldn’t change what he’d done, but he swore to God he really hadn’t thought his reasons were bad at first, and it was all so fucked up and wrong. And he just couldn’t. Keep doing it. Not anymore.

So, the eighth time he resolved would be the last. That when this one reset, it was over. And he’d just…say his goodbyes alone, from a distance, and let the Wraith be. And that would…it would be for the best. He’d been lying to himself. There was no _way_ this flimsy shit attempt at friendship had ever been helping Philip like he used to think. What the _fuck_ had he ever thought he could do that would matter anyway? Fucking like he could have made a real difference. What a joke. What a fucking joke…

It hurt. It hurt to know this would be the last one. But. But he had to…do what was right, for Philip. And he would. Maybe just…maybe it would be okay, to—to just apologize. To stop after that, but say he was sorry one last time after the next reset. Like a goodbye. He. He wasn’t sure. He was afraid he only wanted to do that because it was selfish too, would make him feel better, and that it’d put Philip at risk and do nothing for him. He wanted to believe it was doing right by a friend to say goodbye, but, since it was him, it was probably for nothing and shit and bad, and he shouldn’t, and he was still thinking about that by the time the eighth reset rolled around.

He’d gone back to drinking to deal with it. Drinking hard, because what did it matter now anyway? And he had been digging through a box, and found a journal page, and he’d recognized the handwriting and frozen immediately, and then slid into a corner and read it, even though he was already in a trial, because he’d been so fucking afraid he might die and lose it forever, and he’d just…he’d wanted to know. It might be the last time he ever heard from the guy, now that he wasn’t talking anymore.

And it had been a page from last cycle, he knew, because Philip was talking about a specific trial—the first that rotation, Ollie remembered. Because Philip had plowed into him while invisible—both of them hearing a gen almost completed and running to it, Ollie to help, Philip to break it, and they’d legit gotten stuck in the doorway for about half a second and not seen each other in time at all, and even though he’d taken the sickle to the chest, for a second it had been almost comical to him. Apparently, Philip had thought so too. Even said ‘almost funny’ word for word in his page. Ollie had no idea why he’d found this page, when nobody else had ever found a writing that wasn’t from a survivor period, and was left wondering why it was only one page this time, all curled up under the bar in Glenvale, where he’d been many, many times, but never for any reason but stealing alcohol. And then he’d read the line after the one about it being funny, almost, and about the Wraith striking him. It read  “It was odd, because I know I have seen this boy many, many times before, and never once known a man who looked at all like him in my old life, but for a second when I saw him, I felt for some impossible reason that I knew him—as I was seeing an old friend for the first time in months, and I almost hesitated to strike him.”

And Oliver had to stop reading. He just sat there, curled up, and slowly he clutched the page to his chest and stared out nothing, unable to feel beyond the moment he was caught in. Because yesterday, he’d had his first trial with Philip since the reset, and when he’d uncloaked by the temple steps in the temple of Purgation, and Ollie had startled and whipped around to look up at him. He _had_ hesitated. Faltered a whole swing, before recovering and going to cut him down.

 _Which means you do remember me, _thought Ollie, positively sick with the way that made him feel. And he started to cry, which he did so _fucking_ rarely, and couldn’t stop. Because for months, all this time, he’d been convincing himself inch by inch that it was a one-sided sick game he’d been playing, and meant nothing to Philip— _could_ mean nothing, and all both their suffering had been for nothing, and had only ever been just a cruel and weak decision on his part not to be willing to say goodbye. But he’d almost faltered last time. And he had faltered this time. Which meant it hadn’t been surprise, or the look on Ollie’s face, or whatever it was his brain had assumed it was yesterday. It meant that, even if his memories were all gone, and always would be, still, in some deep, lasting, meaningful way, Philip _did_ remember him. His body did, his instincts did, his eyes did, even if his mind did not. And the lines after that, when Ollie got the nerve to read them again, were even better. They were almost too much for him to be able to stand.

“I know it is strange. I cannot explain it—cannot even guess at it, even for myself. And I did my duty; I hunted him like all the rest—I am not such a fool as that. But. But for a moment, when I saw him, I was truly happy. Like I had opened my door in the states at a knock to find Isa had come all the way from Nigeria to visit me, and I was welcoming my family in with open arms. I felt like I knew him. I felt comforted, and it was familiar, and happy. I. I cannot begin to understand it. But it felt so wrong to kill him. To hurt him at all. I have been trying since this morning to understand why, and why now, when I have had him in what must be near to a hundred trials before that I can remember, and never once have I had this reaction? I know it is foolish, and stupid, and he is the sort of man I should have liked to kill by my own hands, and should be glad to be able to do so to now, but. I still cannot shake the feeling, entirely.

It was nice.

I know it shouldn’t be, but. It was the first time, I think in years, that I have felt even remotely close to home. So. I wish to record it here, so I may re-read this entry and feel that again. I know it is unlikely that such a thing will happen to me, maybe ever again, as long as my life here lasts. And I would dearly like to be able to remember it. Even if it makes no sense. And cannot. It was still…welcome.

I do not think I will ever forget it. I hope I do not. I do not think I have ever before felt even fleeting comfort in this place.”

And he had ended the entry happy. In spite of everything. Day one, more injuries then ever before, half deaf, all because of Ollie, and he had written it was the most comforted he’d felt in years.

Ollie got found by the Plague and didn’t make it through that trial, because he hadn’t been able to climb back out from under the counter in the saloon and stop crying, but she’d looked kind of weirded out by that, and just grabbed him and hooked him without puking on him or slamming him with her mace thing at all, and he hadn’t even cared. All he’d cared about was if he’d still have the page after. And he hadn’t—it had been gone, and he’d been about to lose it, but Adam had made it out of the trial about six minutes later, and walked over like Jeff had with the book _months_ ago. Said “I was last up and I thought I saw something sparkling under your hook and hoped maybe I would get lucky and you’d have packed a key, but it was just a paper. I have no idea _how_ a…page of old paper was _flickering_ like that, but I picked it up for you.”

And he’d held it out and Ollie had taken it, suddenly _horrifically_ nervous Adam would have read the thing, and said, “Thanks. How’d you make it out?”

And Adam had shook his head and said, “I didn’t. She got me at a gate. But I burned a white ward before the trial. Got to keep my map and your note,” and handed it over without a snide comment or knowing look at all, so he hoped maybe he hadn’t. Although he _had_ given Ollie a very _concerned_ look, and hesitated.

 _Ah shit,_ thought Ollie.

“I uh—I didn’t read that,” said Adam after a second, lowering his voice a little, “Because I could tell it was for you a few lines in, and I know how much you value your privacy, and it just felt weirdly wrong to keep going. But. Whatever’s going on with you and the Wraith….” He paused, and glanced away, like he couldn’t find the right words, before turning back and saying, “I know you don’t… _prefer_ me, as far as the survivors go.”

That kind of felt like a smack to the face, and Ollie’s body kicked into fight mode, ready to defend himself, but Adam wasn’t saying it like an attack, voice still just level and understanding and a bit concerned, like before, and maybe usually that would have annoyed Ollie, because Adam usually did for some reason, but this time it just made him feel odd. Unsettled. …Guilty? Maybe?

“So, I’m sure you won’t want to talk to _me_ about it,” continued Adam in the same tone, giving him a faint hint of a sad smile, “But please. Talk to someone. Jeff, Kate. Dwight. Jane. Meg. Anyone you trust. I know you like to keep things to yourself, but you’re running yourself ragged. I’m sorry if that…comes off a little judgmental, or overstepping. Just. I saw her _hook_ you. And if you go on like _that_ for many more trials…” He stopped again, and looked past Ollie, thinking again, finding the right words, then back at him finally, face still open and calm, a little sad. “I am…suddenly getting a little afraid. That. It won’t be too long until you’re in a trial like the one we almost lost Laurie in. And…if I think you’re getting to close to that, I _will_ tell someone about the half I read, so that someone who you like a little bit better can do something.” Adam gave Ollie an attempt at a smile then, and straightened up. “Sorry to throw so much on you at once. I can see by your expression you didn’t like that. But. No matter how you feel about it, or me, I’m not willing to see anyone I care about walk into a trial they don’t come back from.”

He turned then, and headed off, and there had been a second Ollie could have said something and called him back, but he choked on it, and couldn’t find anything at all to say, and then Adam was out of range to be called over subtly, and he just let him go.

Feeling…wrong, for the first time…ever, actually, he was pretty sure. About something he’d done to Adam. And confused by that, and what Adam had said, and by the fact he was feeling annoyance and anger and guilt and a little bit of relief and appreciation all the same time, and unsure which was the most real.

But he’d tried to think about it, and the note. And he’d taped the note to the back of the journal he still had with some medical tape, and then he’d taken a minute to get all of the stuff that had overwhelmed him under control again, and he’d walked to Autohaven to apologize to the Wraith even though it was late, because he’d already missed a few days this cycle, and he wasn’t about to miss one more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While Ollie isn't hella aware, the reason he resents Dwight, Adam, and Tapp, is that all three are people he sees as authority figures--team leader, a professor, a former police detective. And Ollie's personal record with authority figures from parents, to teachers, to pretty much anyone is uhnnng lets just say /bad/. Which is unfortunate for him and Dwight, Adam, and Tapp, who have really done nothing to bear the brunt of his annoyance at all times.
> 
> The chapter title 'Målsodh' is a South Sámi word meaning to change/become different.
> 
> While the note Philip left before going to die, he assumed, he would have written in English--hoping Ollie might find it--usually, he writes in Hausa. I write Philip as mixed Igbo-Hausa because I always have, and I assume after what happened with the genocide of his people in the 1960s, it just...would have been instinctively safer to make Hausa of the two, the language he used more. Ollie is able to read both his whole journal here, and his page later, because Vigo translated them and effectively made an English copy he would be able to read. Which is...a fucking massive amount of work, even using some amount of realm-creation-manipulability to make it easier. Vigo has spent his time in the void learning anything he can from the minds of survivors while trying not to pry into things that are /too/ personal unless they're vital to him, out of basic politeness and consent. I am sure he's picked up many things in his time as basically a floating corpse. I know for a fact he picked up from Philip's memories working knowledge of the construction and operation of 1960s-1980s automobiles. He's a very dedicated young man. Any edge he can sharpen himself on, he will. 
> 
> Largely because of how her lore and offerings are presented, and the fact she believes the Entity to be a specific Babylonian god--Nergal--in canon, I write Adiris as having a similarly distorted view of where she is, what is going on, and who the survivors are. Which is the reason finding Ollie crying and clinging to a note in Dead Dog Saloon threw her off her rhythm.
> 
> This chapter was a fun one to write, because Ollie takes the POV for a while. I've been fascinated since discussing narrator in college, about the role the narrator plays even in 3rd person stories. Because /someone/ is always telling it. Is it someone who knows the characters, the characters themselves in 3rd instead of 1st person, is it an omniscient god, and if so, why? Why tell the story? It's not like this is/vital/ to piece together for every 3rd person narrative, and most people never do. They just sync with an idea and go, and it works great. But I really love it, and I like to spend time thinking through that element because of how much it knocked me over the first time I did. ILM, for example, is narrated--or maybe it would be better to say, curated, by Vigo. Which affects the structure, the language, the occasional direct audience address--everything. And shapes the narrative a lot, because who is telling that one and why is an integral part of what makes ILM what it is. NDF, on the other hand, by ongoing dbd fic, is a much closer 3rd person, and is essentially (rn) exclusively being told by Quentin, Joey, and occasionally Dwight, with their limited knowledge and perceptions. It's not as important because the narration isn't a massive part of framing for that one, but I still think it's very fun.  
> This story, like ILM and Signifying Nothing, is narrated/curated by Vigo. Which comes through in a lot of things, but especially I think in how his stories are never really about him. If they're about him at all, they're about him caring about what happens to someone else. Except very briefly, in this chunk of ODE, where Ollie takes over narration. (Which creates a massive break in style). It's an extremely different bit, because it /isn't/ like the rest, but it shouldn't be. Because that isn't Vigo writing about anyone. It's someone else taking note, even if they don't have all the facts to put a name to him, of Vigo.
> 
> (Also yes, Vigo thinks he's very clever [to be fair he tends to be] and this was named On Deaf Ears for thematic and moving reasons; play on words with the reality of all three protagonists situations (hearing issues, hearing issues, effectively voiceless and unhearable now), but also because the abbreviation is 'Ode', which is a lyrical poem to an to uplift and sing praises to a specific subject or subjects. Which is essentially what it is from Vigo's pov, and the man really is /only/ capable of writing love songs at the heard of whatever form he writes. That's just who he is.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and the comments are much appreciated. <3 I really hope you continue to enjoy.


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